A Love Letter to Daft Punk
Robots might make better music than 'Human(s) After All'.
On February 22, 2021, Daft Punk announced their retirement from music with an 8-minute long video entitled, “Epilogue”. Using excerpts from their 2006 film Daft Punk’s Electroma, the visual shows both members, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, standing closely together in the desert, wearing their iconic robot suits. Bangalter startlingly explodes after Homem-Christo presses the self-destruct button on Bangalter’s back. Homem-Christo then walks into the sunset. A symbolic, yet definitive, way to announce the end of something great; a near 30-year career of stellar music and an unmatched legacy in electronic dance music. They crafted the French house sound and revived the dance genre, injecting emotion and nostalgia into albums like their disco-influenced masterpiece Discovery (2001).
Daft Punk played an important role in my childhood, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Much to the potential dismay of older readers (and myself, at times), I grew up in the mid-to-late 2000s. Looking back, it was an era of fantastic music coming from all genres, and that’s not just me reminiscing through rose-coloured glasses. Accompanied by the hard rock from AC/DC and Van Halen played every morning in my father’s car, dance floor bangers like "Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé, “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada, and “The Way I Are” by Timbaland ruled the soundscape of my early years.
Daft Punk were relatively unknown to me and my friends, but their songs weren’t. “One More Time” was a late night radio classic and “Get Lucky” was one of the biggest (and grooviest) songs of my adolescence. Their sound permeated through music culture, even though little was known about the people behind the robot suits. Their anonymity put the focus squarely on the music and their impeccable ability. Daft Punk’s music felt important; it felt like a statement was being made. I think some music listeners may have trouble understanding how anything profound can come from a synthesizer and a vocoder. However, when one’s appreciation for music is as intense as it is for Bangalter and Homem-Christo, their brilliance becomes blatant.
In a negative review of Shimmies In Super 8 (1993), an album from rock band Darlin’, the former British magazine Melody Maker called it a, “daft punky thrash.” Consequently, the death of Darlin’ and the birth of Daft Punk came soon after. The punk rock music of Darlin’ transformed into the rave-style electronic dance music of Daft Punk, but their rock roots never fully left them. Along with the slight nods to their rock origins throughout their discography, the album Human After All (2005) would substantially incorporate rock into their trademark electronic sound.
Pure house music is an industry fixated on the single. That is, when you hear an EDM or house track in the club or on the radio, the artist likely released it as a standalone single, and not as a track to be considered in the context of an entire album. You’ll encounter compilation albums from DJs and producers, but rarely will these artists create a complete body of work to be listened from top to bottom, first to last, in the order that they are placed in the tracklist. Daft Punk did. They sequenced their albums perfectly, giving their listeners time to breath from the often clamorous and repetitive nature of house music.
On their debut album Homework (1997), that cohesion is not as prevalent. While the second track “WDPK 837 FM” mimics the classic American radio announcer introductions, “WDPK 83.7, the sound of tomorrow. The music of today brings you exclusively Daft Punk's Homework,” there is no central theme other than Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s readiness and insistence on making their voice heard in dance music. Unlike the popular club artists of the late 1990s, their music appealed to a mainstream audience; their unique ability to merge their previous music stylings with their experimentation involving synthesizers and drum machines gave everyone something to enjoy. Also, their songs were complete earworms. Some of their catchiest melodies reside on this album. “Da Funk” and “Around the World” became club standards, and album tracks such as “Teachers” foreshadowed what was to come from the impressive newbies.
The urge to play Homework, apart from its singles, is quite rare, unless I’m trying to get into the “getting ready for a night out” mood. The same can be said for their aforementioned third album Human After All. House music is repetitive, I get that. It’s actually the whole point of it; the incessant and progressive beats are designed to keep people moving. But, I think Daft Punk is at their best when they have a calculated concept driving their work forward. After all, Bangalter admits that Homework was, “a load of singles… there was no intended theme because all the tracks were recorded before we arranged the sequence of the album.” Likewise, Human After All was recorded, mixed, and mastered in six weeks, and was “pure [and impetuous] improvisation.” This is not to devalue the merit of these projects or to suggest that spontaneous creations can’t be transcendent. Still, in the case of Daft Punk, the albums Discovery and Random Access Memories (2013) benefited from the time and care allocated to them.
Discovery is an experience. I can’t explain it any other way than to say that, it’s like aliens came down to Earth, invited you onto their ship, and took you on an adventure through space. At the time of its release in 2001, it was the music of the future, but also an ode to the music that Bangalter and Homem-Christo grew up with. A disco house record enriched by jazz, funk, rock, and R&B stylings from the 1970s, Discovery was a balance between the old and the new with the clever use of samples like “Evil Woman” by Electric Light Orchestra on “Face to Face” and “Break Down for Love” by Tavares on “High Life”. The album changed the rules of electronic dance music.
Daft Punk crafted the project like a pop album, not a house album. It injected life, emotion, and nostalgia into the house genre, which had garnered an unfair reputation for sounding monotonous and repetitive. Musically, how can you not bop your head to Romanthony’s auto-tuned vocals on “One More Time”, stank face when the slickest guitar riff you’ll ever hear plays on “Aerodynamic”, or go f-ing nuts at the absolute dance frenzy on “Crescendolls” and “Superheroes”?
Now, for a personal anecdote (I promise it’s related to the robots). A year ago, I watched the animated documentary film Flee (2021). Equally heart wrenching and heartwarming, it details the story of Amin Nawabi fleeing from his war-ridden home in Afghanistan to Denmark as a refugee. After years of turmoil, Amin is alone in Denmark, forced to lie about his journey and his family to avoid deportation back to Afghanistan. His brother Abbas and sisters live in Sweden and, during a visit to his family’s home, the constant pestering from his brother on his relationships with women causes Amin to reluctantly reveal that he’s gay. The room goes silent and Abbas demands that his brother follow him to the car. Nervous and frightened of a likely negative reaction from his brother, Amin obliges.
Once in the car, flashbacks of Amin’s childhood of him dancing freely with his Walkman in the streets of Afghanistan and scenes of his brother Abbas embracing him through different periods of his life are accompanied by the opening digital flute and organ sound from Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo”. As Abbas and Amin step out of the car, they approach the entrance to a nightclub. The synths build once Amin steps in, but the track fully reveals itself when Amin pulls back the curtain to uncover the euphoric gay atmosphere hidden inside. His brother hugs him and says, “There’s nothing to worry about. We always knew.” At this point, I’m a complete mess. This is truly one of the greatest needle drops in film history. The track exudes such emotion, joy, freedom, but a sense of comfort as well, and this scene from Flee opened my eyes and ears to how magical Daft Punk’s music Discovery is.
Daft Punk fostered a culture of sampling which extended to their own work as well. Kanye West notably sampled “Harder Better Faster Stronger” on his mega hit “Stronger” in 2008, Jazmine Sullivan sampled “Veridis Quo” on her Missy Elliot-produced track “Dream Big”, Drake recently sampled “One More Time” on his collaborative album with 21 Savage, and Janet Jackson and Busta Rhymes have both sampled Daft Punk as well. Their efforts along with the music from other dance music pioneers have transcended the barriers of genre and helped modern artists to embrace a non-linear approach to the creation of their art. In other words, Daft Punk used R&B and funk samples in the making of Discovery, and R&B and hip-hop artists are incorporating dance and house cuts into their craft. The beauty of music.
Apart from the release of their critically acclaimed live album Alive 2007 (2007) and the soundtrack for the film Tron: Legacy (2010), Daft Punk stayed relatively quiet after Human After All. They had cemented their legacy as one of, if not the, most influential dance artists of all time, albeit their post-Discovery output received mixed reactions. When fans thought things couldn’t get bigger for the house duo, they did. In 2013, Daft Punk released Random Access Memories. Number one on nearly every chart it entered, the winner of Album of the Year at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, acclaim from fans and critics alike, their biggest album yet, and their biggest single yet with “Get Lucky”; Daft Punk was in demand, more than ever.
Giorgio Moroder, pioneer of euro disco and electronic dance, is featured on the second track, “Giorgio by Moroder”. In a spoken word excerpt, Moroder describes his introduction into the club scene in Germany and his experimentation with the synthesizer and other electronic instruments on the production for Donna Summer’s albums and his own projects as well. He calls it the “the sound of the future” before the recording explodes into synth ecstacy coupled with a 70-person orchestra woven into his continual spoken word.
The album is Daft Punk’s love letter to music (which is quite literally proven on the opening track, “Give Life Back to Music”). Much like Discovery, this project was a fusion of all of their inspirations throughout their career: Giorgio Moroder, Paul Williams, Nile Rodgers, and Pharrell Williams. But, instead of following the Discovery formula which would entail sampling “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer or using a guitar riff from one of Rodgers’ records from the 1970s, they directly worked with their heros and peers as collaborators to create the music they loved. Random Access Memories was the perfect swan song for Daft Punk’s illustrious career. By using live instruments and avoiding sampling altogether, the album consists of original pieces of music that producers may sample in the future. It was a retroactive effort to give back to the culture of music that they built their career upon.
Daft Punk’s artistry is revered by listeners and artists. Not only because the music is great, but because they care. When Daft Punk released something, it was because they had a statement to make. Their appreciation for those who came before them and the sounds that ruled their soundscape was always at the forefront of their music. You couldn’t talk about what they looked like, the bars and restaurants they frequented, the people they were dating, or the things they said. Bangalter and Homem-Christo forced you to sit with (or dance to) the music, and the music alone. That’s all they cared about and it becomes clear when listening to their catalog. Even though I won’t have any new Daft Punk records to look forward to, I’m excited to create new memories in my life with the music they’ve released thus far.
Thanks to you, I just had a 🤯 moment;
Veridis Quo➡️ very disco➡️ discovery
It's just the perfect song for the film scene you so eloquently described. xo