Daft Punk

Perfectionists in everything from their sound to the shine of their helmets, Daft Punk is back in the spotlight with their new album.

TEXT: ARMAS VIKSTROM

A series of publications from back issues of Numero magazine. This material was published in the magazine Numéro N 03 (May 2013)

They have only three full-length albums to their credit, the last of which was released eight years ago, and yet this couple, with the obligatory helmets on their heads, bears the status of living legends. Daft Punk, a duo of Parisians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Tom Bangalter, is immortalized on Coca-Cola bottles and in the form of toys; headphones and other unobtrusive merchandise are produced under their brand.

Possessing commercial potential to match the group Kiss, they largely inherit the mythology of the progenitors of techno Kraftwerk: costumes from science fiction films, concert installations where video and computer effects communicate with sound on equal terms, and finally, the music itself - electronics is as inspired as it is functional, where every detail is calculated to the smallest detail. “People think that we are obsessed with perfectionism, but in fact, control is freedom,” Guy-Manuel reasoned in an interview. Looking back to proto-techno and early experiments with synthesizers, Homem-Christo and Bangalter peppered their tracks with snatches of '70s disco and funk. It would seem, who hasn’t performed such a trick? But the way the musicians handled this simple material made it clear: Daft Punk's music is not intended for nostalgic discos, but for fashionable dance floors. The melodic tenderness, set to a hard beat that does not tolerate appeals, was like the courtship of an experienced womanizer - reverent in words, but persistent in deeds. The crowd melted from the very first date - Da Funk's debut single.

Storming the world's charts, Daft Punk found themselves on the crest of a wave of French house, but as a result they turned out to be larger and more important than all their colleagues and epigones combined. The fact that the innovators of house music of the nineties call their idols not the legendary Germans, but The Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, is strange only at first glance: while still classmates in one of the Parisian schools, they put together a rock band called Darlin' - in honor of one of the songs of the “beach boys”. Their songs even received a review in the influential magazine Melody Maker - however, a purely negative one. The journalist called them nothing less than “a bunch of meaningless scum.” But the musicians themselves were delighted by the review. Having replaced the guitar and bass with samplers and drum machines, Guy-Manuel and Tom called themselves: “A Pile of Garbage,” Daft Punk. In three years, the first Homework album will be released, the song Around the World will literally fly around the entire planet, and its videos will be directed by Michel Gondry, Roman Coppola and Spike Jonze - people from whose films you can study the history of the arts of the 2000s.

The next album Discovery and the video One More Time - part of the animated project Interstella 5555, made together with the classic of Japanese animation Leiji Matsumoto - only strengthened Daft Punk's position. Kindly naive sketches from spaceships perfectly illustrated the retrofuturism of the French team. After all, their music is not so much about the future, but about how our ancestors imagined this future. And here another analogy arises - with fashion: the apparent simplicity and actual complexity of the musical cut makes Daft Punk similar to the most witty fashion designers of their generation. Is it any wonder that Hedi Slimane asked them to provide the musical accompaniment for the first show of the renewed Saint Laurent Paris brand?

Daft Punk, equally far from pop house with radio and underground nerdiness, created a new gold standard in dance music - and in many ways found themselves hostage to it. Over time, their tracks became harder and more technical, and behind this polish the fans felt less and less real life. The third album, Human After All, recorded in literally two weeks - a period in which the group usually polished only a few sounds - was received rather coolly. After the hit-making machine misfired, the couple continued to reap the benefits of a growing cult following (Grammy Awards, anthologies and remix collections, computer game mixes, and the acclaimed soundtrack for the Disney film Tron: Legacy), but at the same time they went out into public less and less often. The exception is a speech in support of victims on the island of Haiti.

The material from the long-awaited album Random Access Memories is filtered out drop by drop - in minute-long clips in the intros of the TV show Saturday Night Live, and the French intend to present it not with a tour at the largest festivals, but with a one-time concert in the tiny Australian town of Vi-Vaa. You can debate for a long time what is more in this - the whims of great goodwins from electronics or carefully thought out PR, but something else is much more important: very soon the triumph of simple body movements and a vocoder, curling like a top around a tense beat, will sound from our speakers again. Everything is as before. One more time.

May 21 - release of the album Random Access Memories. June 24 - St. Petersburg Sports and Concert Hall.