Au revoir Daft Punk

Epilogue, 1993-2021. And one date, February 22, 2021, to mark the end of an idyll.

So, the two most explosive French kids in popular music of the last thirty years have decided to light the fuse and blow themselves up, artistically speaking. Forever, or more simply for as long as it suits them. A sudden epilogue? Quite the opposite. The end, as the harbinger of a new beginning, had been looming for a while. And the signs of fatigue were there in plain sight. Just think of their choice to dig up a clip from "Electroma" to announce their exit. A media-savvy, spectacular idea, but at the same time also a clear signal that the tank was running on empty.

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo — Daft Punk to the world, originally described, ill-advisedly, by Melody Maker as "a bunch of daft punk" — have thus taken their leave of the solar system without offering any clues as to what comes next. One could improvise theories about the mechanics of the gesture, analyze every single frame, even opt for silence as a sign of some unspecified respect for the path they chose, a direction that, in the end, has been known to most since the dawn of time. It's no secret, after all, that the two prefer to stay in the background, safely sheltered behind their helmets, reinterpreting from the very first moments of their recording career an aesthetic that links Robert Wise, the Wachowskis, Bruce Bethke and his theory of cyberpunk. And the opening line of William Ford Gibson's "Neuromancer" — "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" — is more than enough to semantically sum up the genesis and the sociological epilogue of the pair, without overcomplicating things with narrative pirouettes worthy of a 4.0 version of some pompous Italian film character. Just as it would be pointless to remind most people of their putative forefathers, starting with the Superobots, who in "Supercar Gattiger" reworked the eternal, unreachable Morricone of "Dance On", and so on and so forth.

Now, more than ever, body and soul suggest anchoring ourselves to memories, to the music itself, plain and simple, with the humble intent of trying to plant a few meaningful markers for those who come after — that is, for the youngest listeners who haven't yet had the pleasure of exploring their magic. Daft Punk's is a trajectory that has been celebrated every which way, starting right here on these pages: milestone album, best album of the Naughties, undisputed symbol of the French touch, and so on. The accolades have piled up on every occasion. And this somewhat sad moment suggests we bid them farewell, while we wait for whatever comes next, by digging up seven particular mo(ve)ments from their career. Seven pivotal passages. Seven vibrations to get to know them better. To frame them according to the eras they lived through. No other hidden ambition, nor the absurd pretense of defining their best work, nor the presumption of reducing a stratospheric career to seven phases. Because Daft Punk's light has been total. And variations in intensity are part of the deal. "We are human, after all".

Au revoir, Daft Punk.

"Assault" (1994)

You can't expect to turn the world upside down without first having turned your own universe upside down. In this case, without first having ransacked the family garage with a used console and a couple of battered knobs. "Assault" is exactly that, and it's also the first love affair of two young Fnac employees from Paris with that thing called acid-techno, acid-house, or more simply, with all the acid they poured, quite irreverently, over the shards of disco music. It's still too early to define their ultimate blueprint, the personal sound with which they'd win over people's hearts and the club's speakers. There's no trace yet of the backward glance, of the wild swagger, or of the punk vocation that would take over the planet three years later. These are "only" the first instants of the big bang, when everything is still one, and the only possible gait is that of the delinquent. Six minutes of relentless, hammering insistence. There are the seeds kindly handed down by Zdar and de Crécy. There's the raw material. The naked vision. After all, as a famous sculptor once said, "the image is already inside, you just have to strip it bare".

"Indo Silver Club" (1996)

"Part One" and "Part Two", the first barely four minutes long, the second just over that mark. Reworked as the two of them see fit, and molded into a single definitive version on the second half of the "Homework" record. Sure, that latter version is much closer to "Part Two". But it's in the raw pulse of "Part One" that the dress rehearsal for the alchemy that would soon change the duo's fortunes takes shape — the magical, acid-driven acceleration that would go on to define an era. 1996 is, essentially, the gestation year. And while "The New Wave" had, two years earlier, already staked out their underground credentials with a brisk house-inflected pulse, later reshaped along the lines of mid-to-late-'70s disco music, reworked in their own way and filtered through a new futurist aesthetic, "Indo Silver Club" is the perfect soundcheck for the ultimate party. The private bash before the collective rave.

"Burnin'" (1997)

Call it nomen omen. The Saturn V ignites and lifts off the ground. And this time it does so from Paris, forget Cape Canaveral. This is, in fact, one of the high points of "Homework". As if the scratching were being done by a machine, a robot gone haywire. All of it before the groove kicks in, exactly 110 seconds into the track. That groove: a simple little loop, as irresistible as it is basic. It would get anybody moving. "Burnin'" is the most club-ready track of Daft Punk's first chapter, full stop, no way around it. Listening to it means, one way or another, triggering some kind of movement. It doesn't matter what's doing the moving. What matters is not standing still — on pain of clearly belonging to some alien race. Barely seven minutes in which anxiety turns into joy. Apparent stop&go tricks to disguise the redundant effect constantly humming in the background. A little sleight of hand the pair would go on to perfect over time, to the point of exhaustion. These are simple recipes that few know how to cook to perfection, without immediately tipping over into bad taste. It's the nouvelle cuisine of two chefs with helmets instead of toques.

"Veridis Quo" (2001)

One should really take every single moment of "Discovery" and include it in this feature — no need to spell it out. It's the album with which the pair opened the doors of their spaceship to the world, helped along by the animated video that would introduce "Interstella 5555", the 2003 animated film created by Leiji Matsumoto and entirely inspired by this musical masterpiece. One could, and perhaps should, start with "One More Time", the hit of all hits by the two Frenchmen, and plant it in the ground like Neil Armstrong's flag on the moon. But if there's one track that in some way marks a watershed moment on an album that parted the waters as neatly as Moses did at the foot of the Red Sea, it's "Veridis Quo". Marc Cerrone's evergreen "Supernature" is slowed down by the duo into an ecstatic, Moroder-esque embrace that would anticipate future musical movements bent on revisiting mid-to-late-'70s disco sounds, like the one Johnny Jewel and his Italians Do It Better Records would create in 2006. Memorable is the Renaissance-like symphony that glides onto the dancefloor with real grace. One of the highest mo(ve)ments of their career, regardless of any other consideration.

“Digital Love” (2001)

Love in its digital form. It could hardly be otherwise. Written with acclaimed Chicago producer Carlos Sosa, better known as DJ Sneak, "Digital Love" is a canvas from which a buoyant electro-house sensuality emerges. A red-hot hit that would go on to soundtrack sunsets and summer parties across the Old Continent (and beyond). Not only that: the track is damning proof of just how surgically Daft Punk could extract five seconds from a song of the past — in this case George Duke's 1979 "Love You More" — stretch it out to infinity and flood it with their own light. A trick they pull off again and again, mostly to spectacular effect. But "Digital Love" has something the other alchemical experiments don't. That extra ingredient. It's the indefinable ecstasy running through every single second of it. A dazzling burst of photons. The instruction is simple: rise off the dancefloor and fly away, elsewhere. A dancefloor for happy angels, and nothing more.

“Derezzed” (2010)

"Human After All"'s descent back to Earth precedes this episode by five years. Yes, because the past-its-prime android AOR of "Robot Rock" and the garish "Television Rules The Nation" — a variation on an Orwellian streak that's frankly wearisome from every angle — mark, alongside the other eight tracks on Daft Punk's most divisive album, a stumble in their catalogue. It happens, and that's fine. Future imitators notwithstanding. So we jump straight to 2010, to the multimillion-dollar deal with Disney for "Tron Legacy". Truth be told, another release that's far from welcome. The bloated string orchestra clashes badly with the nerdy spirit at the film's core. A soporific, pointless effort, as useless as the movie it's meant to score. Yet there's one moment where the French duo come back to their senses, shedding the ill-fitting costume. "Derezzed" is the last flourish of the disco-pop vision inaugurated on "Discovery": a shard fired off in four-four time and launched beyond Earth's orbit. Barely two minutes of synthetic spins and random pauses, serving as an aperitif for the future looming ahead — the one that would see them sit at the same table as Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers.

“Touch” (2013)

The album of memories is, in the end, the true epilogue. Random Access Memories marks the last connection with this world — a final farewell before vanishing into the desert, blowing themselves up and sending their message eight light years away. On the album of hits par excellence — from the wildly successful, thoroughly Chic-indebted "Get Lucky", to the sensational "Instant Crush" featuring that ever-reliable prankster Julian Casablancas, to the embrace with uncle Giorgio, or King Giorgio (the real one, mind you, not the political one) on "Giorgio By Moroder" — there's a moment where the duo hit the G-spot of their career. "Touch" is Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's dream, caressed alongside his good friend Sebastien Tellier on "Sexuality". It's eroticism according to Daft Punk. Sic et simpliciter. It's no coincidence that it's also the track chosen to bid everyone farewell. "Touch" is the ultimate orgasm. The explosion that precedes joy. Sunlight against a backdrop where time no longer seems in a hurry, finally at peace with itself, while the choir of angels mentioned earlier sings words of universal love from on high. There's a new home waiting to be lived in, and the hope is that we all get to visit it soon.

Home, hold on, if love is the answer, you’re home

Hold on, if love is the answer, you’re home

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