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DAFT PUNK  Human After All  Virgin  ***

It took, they tell us, six weeks for Daft Punk to record Human After All. Over those six weeks, the Daft pair were bent over keyboards, huddled behind consoles and finding all that high-tech robot wear a mite sweaty for the time of year. What has emerged is a grand leap backwards, an album that reverses beyond 2001's Discovery and right past their Homework debut to dabble in the kind of acid squelching that Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo found so alluring 10 years ago. In the midst of beats and sequences shorn of all plumage, you will find such grand sleazy moments as The Brainwasher or the Kraftwerking Steam Machine. What you won't find, though, are tunes to go high-stepping in your local discotheque alongside One More Time and Around the World. Maybe that's a deliberate decision; or maybe it's a case that even pre-owned robotic humans need more time in the studio. www.daftpunk.com

Jim Carroll