Daft Punk's debut LP Homework was released 20 years ago today. First appearing on the radar of music fans in 1995 with the release of the infectious club curio 'Da Funk' , the helmeted French duo sparked the interest of a generation with their specific brand of disco-influenced house music with an of it's time modern twist. Major label interest naturally followed with Virgin re-releasing 'Da Funk' in 1996 accompanied by the iconic Spike Jonze directed video as pre-cursor to the LP, Homework, released in January 1997. Wearing their influences very much on their sleeves, album track 'Teachers' (also the b-side to the hit single 'Around the World') lists a catalog of house, electro and funk music greats to have influenced them, among them the likes of Lil' Louis, Kenny Dope, George Clinton, DJ Hell and Dr. Dre. This catalog of influences is displayed by the duo's choice of sample material, for which the album is well known. Here we revisit the high points from the album's extensive sample listings and some of the music released since that was influenced by it:

As lead single 'Da Funk' is clearly one of the stars of the show on this album. The driving drums throughout the track were lifted from Vaughan Mason and Crew's heavily sampled 'Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll', but the more unexpected sample comes courtesy of Barry White with occasional one bar drum break interludes that take the sample far from the West Coast hip hop tracks with which it is more typically associated.

Burnin's sample of the Bar-Kays's 'Freaky Behavior' shows off the group's nack for spinning a brief musical phrase into a complete track. This short, heavily filtered, half bar groove lays the back bone for a slice of punchy, groove led modern disco, also borrowing a funky b-line from The Originals 'Down To Love Town'.

Among the more unusual sample flips on the LP is 'High Fidelity's sample of Billy Joel's 'Just The Way You Are', utlizing choppy fragments of vocals, breaths and horns to create a repetitive disco-tempo groove that is entirely removed from the tone of the source material.

Returning to more familiar disco territory, Karen Young's excellent 1978 West End single 'Hot Shot' gets a housey rework on 'Indo Silver Club'.

One of no fewer than three tracks on the album to sample Vaughan Mason's roller-boogie classic, these are drums that define the early Daft Punk sound.

The record also went on to influence many new musical endeavours and has been sampled by The Avalanches, Todd Terry, Gorillaz and JoJo to name a few. Janet Jackson also found inspiration in 2008's 'So Much Betta' sampling 'Daftendirekt'.

Soulwax's 'Shibuya' remix of LCD Soundsystem's 'Daft Punk is Playing at my House' contains a collage of various samples from all over Homework

Stand-out single 'Around The World' is largely what will be remembered from this collection but artists like Lil B continue to plunder these lesser hyped sounds for new music.

The Motorbass remix of 'Around the World' takes very little from the original but delivers a helping of Miami sunshine up against some other familiar samples

For further listening, check out our 'Daft Punk: The Samples' Mixtape on Mixcloud.



