A 1997 debut album of filtered French house whose lead single has a video about a dog-headed New Yorker (1997)
Homework — the single is "Da Funk", the video by Spike Jonze.
Popular music · Electronic
Daft Punk
1993–2021 · French
French house — filtered disco, later live studio funk
Daft Punk were Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, a Parisian duo who took the name from a dismissive review of their earlier indie band and became the most celebrated act in electronic dance music. They filtered old disco records into euphoric house, hid behind robot helmets from 1999 onwards, and finally abandoned samplers altogether for Random Access Memories, a record made with veteran session musicians that won the Album of the Year Grammy. They announced their split in February 2021 with a wordless video.
How to spot them
- ▸Two robots in gold and silver helmets; no interviews, no faces
- ▸French touch: filtered loops of 1970s disco and soft rock, sidechained and compressed
- ▸The pyramid stage of the Alive 2007 tour
- ▸A name taken from a Melody Maker review calling their previous band 'a daft punky thrash'
Songs & albums
A 1997 single whose repeated title phrase is its only lyric, over a rolling bassline and a Michel Gondry video (1997)
"Around the World".
A 2001 album accompanied by a feature-length anime made with a Japanese manga master (2001)
Discovery, visualised as Interstella 5555 with Leiji Matsumoto.
A 2000 single whose vocodered chorus counts out a celebration, a club staple ever since (2000)
"One More Time", with a vocal by Romanthony.
A 2001 track whose chopped vocoder mantra was sampled for a Kanye West hit six years later (2001)
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", the basis of West's "Stronger".
A 2010 orchestral and synthesised soundtrack for a Disney sequel set inside a computer (2010)
TRON: Legacy.
A 2013 single with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers that became the song of that summer (2013)
"Get Lucky" — Record of the Year at the 2014 Grammys.
A 2013 album made with live session players and disco veterans rather than samples, which won Album of the Year (2013)
Random Access Memories.
Quick-fire facts
- •Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo met at the Lycée Carnot in Paris
- •Their earlier indie band Darlin' was reviewed in Melody Maker as 'a daft punky thrash'; they took the insult as a name
- •They began wearing robot helmets in 1999, claiming a studio accident on 9 September 1999 had transformed them
- •The Alive 2007 tour was performed from inside a giant illuminated pyramid and won the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album
- •Random Access Memories won five Grammys in 2014, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for "Get Lucky"
- •Nile Rodgers of Chic and the disco producer Giorgio Moroder both appear on Random Access Memories
- •They announced their break-up on 22 February 2021 in an eight-minute video called "Epilogue", in which one robot self-destructs
- •Thomas Bangalter released an orchestral ballet score, Mythologies, in 2023
- •Bangalter was also half of Stardust, whose 1998 single "Music Sounds Better with You" is a French house landmark
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Variety — Daft Punk Has Split Up, Publicist Confirms
- uDiscover Music — Daft Punk Announce Split With Eight-Minute 'Epilogue' Video