Daft Punk - Retro-flavored Cyberdance

Daft Punk are a duo formed in Paris in 1992, made up of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. In 1995, the single "Da Funk" – a clever update of 80s electronic ditties like "Pop Corn" and "Pop Muzik" – achieved considerable success: it would become one of the standout tracks on their debut album, 1996's Homework.

On this first record, Daft Punk show off some excellent "bedroom" music: minimalist in its sounds, somewhere between vocoders and dance keyboards, catchy enough and indebted to no single strand of electronic music, with echoes detectable of Kraftwerk, but also of 70s disco music and the synth-pop that exploded in the Eighties.

Daft Punk's compositions are built on a single idea repeated over and over, with small sounds added along the way and the constant hammering rhythm typical of certain techno music. Yet it would be reductive to label Daft Punk mere "reworkers" of old ideas: their record is full of small masterpieces that, helped along by excellent videos, managed to break through and become a genuine phenomenon. More than "Da Funk", it's "Around the World" that grabs the attention and becomes a huge commercial hit. What might at first seem like a disposable hit actually springs from an irresistible rhythm, a catchy background bassline and, above all, the synthetic voice that repeats, over and over, the same three words that give the track its title. So simple it's brilliant. The same goes for other tracks on the record: "Phoenix", "Fresh" and "Teachers", for instance, are built on a melodic idea relentlessly repeated, to the point of becoming irresistibly catchy. On "Burnin'" and "Rollin' & Scratchin'", the backbone of the song is simply an electronic sound, unpleasant at first but which becomes familiar precisely through its constant repetition, as well as thanks to the rhythm and the background textures. "Alive" is the most mature track on the record, since it carries an innovative, thoroughly original charge that sets it apart from the rest.

In 2001 came the second album, Discovery. With greater resources at their disposal, Daft Punk turned out a record that is innovative, retro and critical all at once. It's innovative because it boasts yet another considerable array of ideas and inventions; it's retro because here too the nods to the past are obvious. Careful, though: it's critical because it isn't merely a "Cliff's Notes" of the last few decades of music, but a careful, targeted remix, a giant "blob" that absorbs, cuts and adjusts, yet ultimately comes out as something entirely new.

"Aerodynamic", for example, sounds like a straightforward electronic instrumental, but then, suddenly, it drops an ultra-kitsch filtered Van Halen-style riff along with sounds that recall past avant-gardes. The same goes for "Digital Love", "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger": more mature sounds, huge melting pots and, at the same time, utterly danceable, infectious rhythms. The vocals feature more prominently than on the previous album, while the sonic minimalism that had made Daft Punk so distinctive is set aside. Midway through the record come "Nightvision", a brief ambient interlude, "Superheroes", which really does sound like one of the countless typical 80s hits, and even a jazz-funk track like "Something About Us".

The last five tracks don't hold up against the freshness and vitality of what came before, and feel like somewhat self-indulgent exercises in style, even if mention must be made of "Short Circuit" (whose strong point is an ultra-kitsch "Beverly Hills Cop"-style sound) and the closing "Too Long", ten (superfluous) minutes of electronic soul that winks a little too hard at trendy club dance music.

What matters most in this second record, then, is the overall operation: Daft Punk overturn the conventions of Moroder's disco music, producing something exquisitely pop (not only in the musical sense of the word) and knowingly kitsch. As with the first record, the idea here is simple but brilliant. Where on Homework they had played at sketching small electronic frescoes with the bare minimum of means, on Discovery the mission is tougher but equally accomplished: reworking musical ideas from recent decades (themselves included) to offer a critical, nostalgic interpretation of them. All this without lapsing into intellectualism or pure experimentation, but building tracks that never lack catchiness or compelling rhythm. It's an exploration of new frontiers in electronic pop not unlike the parallel work done by their "cousins" and compatriots Air.

In 2005, with their third record, Human After All, Daft Punk managed to catch everyone off guard: once again the duo switched gears and delivered an album recorded in great haste (by their own admission), this time failing to produce the hit singles that had marked their previous records. That didn't stop the record from getting people talking, though – quite the opposite, it split opinion right down the middle: those who consider it a great record find that the repetitiveness, exaggerated and emphasized here, is almost a gesture of protest that, combined with sonics considerably more rock than on the earlier albums, makes it an almost "punk" record in spirit; those who see it as a glaring misstep find in this record a total lack of creativity, made obvious by the poor quality of tracks stretched out of all proportion, nearly indistinguishable from one another, with homages that feel more like rip-offs than references (the ghost of Kraftwerk looms dangerously over at least half the tracks).

Something, however, is worth saving: the fun "Robot Rock" and "Technologic", for example, though we're genuinely far from the greatness of the earlier records, and the album seems to have entertained Daft Punk in making it more than it does the listener, who's left disoriented by a record so simple and yet so complex. It's a cliché to say so, but in a case like this, caught between those shouting masterpiece and those shouting total failure, it takes time – perhaps years – to figure out who's right.

Five years on from Human After All, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter decided to give in to Disney's golden allure, somewhat unexpectedly postponing their long-awaited full return.

A defensible choice by the two Frenchmen, one that split both critics and audience right down the middle, as per the best of traditions. Having clearly sniffed out the plot and setting of the film in question, with Tron Legacy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2010) one might reasonably expect a relentless robotic swarm of orchestrations à la Daft Punk. Not to mention that the perfect fit between first-time director Joseph Kosinski's film and the classic sound of French electronic dance's two standard-bearers could have sparked something genuinely intriguing. None of that happens. The "record" contains only two blasts worthy of the original brand. The rest is the most classic of stars-and-stripes sci-fi underscoring. A truly bloated stew of pseudo-Jarre-style rarefaction, complete with soaring wing-openings and throbbing, dutiful interludes ("Recognizer"). "Arena" alone embodies the dominant sonic theme of the entire film.

Moments like "Rizler", "Outlands" and "The Game Has Changed" emphasize the central, most significant passages of the whole affair. But, as already mentioned above, there are only two truly cybernetic sparks, placed one after the other and steeped in the booming ultra-kitsch that made Daft Punk so unmistakable: "End of Line" and "Derezzed". The first is a pachydermal march in the manner of Kraftwerk, complete with towering synths and intergalactic pathos. The second is a genuine shard of a track, launched in four-four time and sent hurtling beyond Earth's orbit. Barely two minutes of synthetic rotations and randomly muted stop&go that serve as an appetizer for the looming future.

Preceded by an enormous wave of anticipation, masterfully managed by the two Frenchmen through sophisticated promotional techniques (including the star-studded parade of collaborators unveiling the project online), Random Access Memories (2013) reveals an almost self-referential, romantic character.

It's the album of childhood, of memories, of the Seventies, packed with everything that belongs to the pair. Herbie Hancock and company, the B-movie imagery of 70s cinema, full-throttle sci-fi. A kind of disco-lounge veneer, with funk and prog touches in the background.

The mood of the record and the spirit in which it was conceived work in perfect symbiosis. The flirtation between Guy-Manuel and Sébastien Tellier during the steamy "Sexuality" experience must have weighed heavily too, since the Parisian seems to have drawn out of that contact the most erotic side of himself and his music. The pulsing of "Within" thus radiates heat and a thoroughly carnal quality. While on "Beyond", a huge soul orchestra bursts out as a preamble to a featherlight funky groove, with the inevitable vocoder-voice in lounge mode lingering in the background.

The disco-funk strut of the opener “Give Life Back To Music” with Nile Rodgers makes us want to slather on sunscreen. We stake out our turf, feet in the sand, Martini in hand. It’s that feeling of life drifting between the waves during summer aperitivi. On August nights. Riding the same magnetic groove is the pulse of “Instant Crush” with Julian Casablancas, who bounces along superbly, with plenty of space-groove (Kosinski-style, to be clear) that cheerfully sends both soul and backside into orbit. Something that works even better on the immensely Brownian drive of “Loose Yourself To Dance”. Where exactly they dug up composer Paul Williams (who, among other things, won an Oscar for Frank Pierson’s 1976 film “A Star Is Born”) remains a mystery. “Touch” thus emerges as the most “elaborate” and cinematic track of the bunch. It opens with a flourish worthy of Gong (!) in “Flute Salad” mode, morphs in its central section into a moving, Broadway-esque soft-ballad, amid analog warmth, ambient textures and Baldelli-style disco, in a pastiche that captures the album better than a thousand words could, a graceful change of pace that eventually plunges into a spatial vortex complete with choirs and violins proudly on display. “The Game Of Love”, by contrast, is a snapshot with the usual lounge shades, raunchy when called for, pretty and just harmonized enough to rock hips and quite a bit more.

But the fact that Thomas and Guy-Manuel can get away with absolutely anything is proven above all by “Giorgio By Moroder”, a sort of audio-documentary featuring the voice of Moroder himself, with sci-fi blasts and towering guitars building to a climax. Closing things out, “Motherboard” plays with suspensions and almost Canterbury-esque flights of fancy, whereas Panda Bear on “Doin’ It Right” winds the clock back to 2013 indie. The closing “Contact” throws it all definitively into a fading grandeur of space-chaos. Takeoff and landing.

Random Access Memories is Daft Punk's fundamentalist, backward-looking and self-referential record. It's orthodox and absolutely faithful to the party line, often trying to balance on a tightrope that occasionally snaps. It's a reaffirmation of what Daft Punk are and what Daft Punk used to be.

After shaking everyone up by announcing their breakup, Thomas Bangalter is the first to drop the mask and show his face on record.

Mythologies is the solo debut that, right from the start, implies an almost total change of direction.

Gone are the machines, as he himself states. The Parisian embraces classical music in its purest form. He bows to Vivaldi, Bach and Prokofiev. And to Greek mythology. But not only that.

In short, Mythologies is born, grows and dies within the soundtrack of a film. To be precise, a ballet - namely the eponymous piece staged by choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, premiered last year at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. It's an orchestral album like so many others. Bangalter leans on the winds, brass and so on of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, conducted by Romain Dumas.

If the experiment with Disney on Tron Legacy was less than convincing, this time it's truly stunning. Not so much because the legend of french touch and disco music at large has essentially hung up his synths for good, nor for the disorienting post-new-age worries about certain creations of technology, such as the much-debated artificial intelligence, but because of the music itself. Because the twenty-three movements of Mythologies are watered-down stuff. Forgive the blindingly obvious remark.

Indeed, the ties to Greek mythology, the Amazons and even wrestling can do nothing to save it. No use. Every note drips like useless grease, at best fit for the dancers' movements. A support, then. A clearance down the wing. At times even a backward pass. But never an assist. As for goals, forget it - not even a shadow of one. For the most part we're faced with glossy, polished scores, elsewhere absurdly stale, and orchestral ups and downs that at times sound almost like auditions at some random conservatory (“Thalestris”, “Le Catch”). There's also plenty of room for bucolic symphonies, at andante and moderato tempo, and for low-grade minimalism like “Aphrodite”. The “Renaissance” strings of “Circonvolutions” likewise aim for pathos, without moving so much as a leaf in the heart. While the more resigned moments (“Danse Funèbre”, “L’Accouchement”) aim for the epic, missing the target spectacularly.

One could keep piling on. It would, however, be a huge waste of energy. So just one closing remark remains: give us back Daft Punk.

Contributions by Giuliano Delli Paoli (“Tron Legacy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”, “Random Access Memories”, “Mythologies”) and Alberto Asquini (“Random Access Memories”)

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