Daft Punk has ended. I want to talk about them... · 10:45pm Feb 22nd, 2021
As of yesterday, the revolutionary French electronic duo known as Daft Punk has officially broken up and called it quits. While both members, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are both fine, the band very abruptly announced their end with a short video called "Epilogue" on their YouTube channel. (I won't link it here, as it doesn't explain anything beyond that.)
Daft Punk has obviously had a pretty big influence on my work. I mean, two of my stories are named after their songs (Human After All and "Robot Rock"), 18 of the 68 chapters of The Iron Horse are named after Daft Punk songs, as are 3 of the 8 chapters of Human After All. Their influence on modern music was tremendous, going from French House DJs who wrote "Teachers" as an ode to their influences to being pioneers in their own right, even influencing perhaps the other most influential musician of Turing Test's adventures, Porter Robinson. So let me just ramble on a bit about my history with them...
The first time I heard of Daft Punk, I was a teenager and saw their video for "Around the World" on MTV (from their first album, Homework). It was a solid, driving baseline and synth sound with a single repeated phrase and a video featuring skeletons, robot spacemen, and swimsuit girls moving around and around a set of stairs and a circular outer ring. I wasn't sure if I liked it, but I definitely remembered it.
The next time I heard about them, I was in college and saw their video for "One More Time" off their 2nd full album, Discovery, which I still think might be my favorite of their albums. At the time, however, I was still not quite sure if I got it. Again, it's just a song with a repeated phrase - well, two this time, maybe two and a half - with a steady, driving baseline with synths, but this time adding horns and a soulful section in the middle. Very distinctly the same guys... but this time it started to work its way into my consciousness that these guys were a group I should be paying attention to.
Still, they were just sort of this background band that I knew of and liked. "Oh yeah, those techno guys who make a song out of 10 words or less. They're pretty cool."
In the mid 2000s, they released their third album, Human After All. The internet was really turning into the viral meme machine that it would eventually become, and that's when I started seeing memes that included their songs, like "Osaka Sings 'Technologic'" from YTMND.com. (Holy crap, came out in 2005, and it still works!)
Once again, it was like "Okay, these guys are now more than successful: they are established." Their songs started appearing on my iPod a lot more alongside a lot more music that I should really have been paying closer attention to by that time, including Gorillaz and Joonas Hahmo, whom you may notice also get chapter titles in The Iron Horse.
By the time I returned to the U.S., I was a devoted listener and blown away by their one-of-a-kind concert Alive 2007, in which they chopped, remixed, and recombined their songs into gorgeous Frankenstein monster combinations of audio bliss. Here's one titled "Harder Better Faster Stronger," despite it actually being a remix of that song with "Television Rules the Nation" and, prominently, "Around the World."
When Disney's TRON: Legacy came out, you can bet that my butt was in a theater seat, eager to take in the still-relatively new 3D technology, but even more excited to take in the soundtrack provided by, you guessed it, Daft Punk.
And of course, not long after, they came out with their album Random Access Memories in 2013, not long after I became a fan of MLP. That album won a Grammy, and while it was the most crowd-pleasing album in their catalog, calling it simple or a sell-out would be to vastly underestimate the depths of it acoustically and artistically. It featured modern-day artists alongside those who paved the way for Daft Punk themselves, including Giorgio Moroder (whose electronic track "Chase" is, you guessed it, name-dropped in The Iron Horse). In particular, it has one hauntingly beautiful song featuring the criminally underrated legend Paul Williams which would later be used as Turing's love song/lament to Maud Pie, "Touch."
So, what is it about the band I like? Their music, obviously, but there's something to be said about their whole identity. Rather than get bogged down in fame and prestige, the duo always maintained that they just wanted to make music. Their whole "robot" schtick was all about giving them the ability to appear and perform in public without their faces either becoming instantly recognizable or a factor in their marketability. It was the natural extension of the trend in the 90s of club DJs performing with their backs to the audience and has since gone on to influence other artists like Marshmello and Deadmau5, both of whom perform with their signature helmets on.
But you all know my love for robots and their place in fiction. Robots reflect who we are, but they also contrast with us to show what we are not. In this paradoxical relationship, we can likewise see in Daft Punk's music a strangely alien, artificial, over-engineered style of music with repetitive, synthetic sound and endless loops of samples, but when taken as a whole there is something so uniquely human and instinctively appealing about it.
This cold, synthetic outward appearance which houses a beating heart appeals to me, as I myself have dealt with reconciling my inner self with what I present to the world, and that is likewise a key part of what makes my characters, Turing Test in particular, who they truly are. So, after years of listening to Daft Punk's music, the foundations for the idea of what would eventually become The Iron Horse had already been laid.
It's a shame we will likely never get another full album from this brilliant duo, though we at least got a few collabs in more recent years, and perhaps we'll even get some unreleased materials later on down the line. Either way, I'm not one to dwell too much on the negative: we got four full studio albums, a movie soundtrack, and a near-endless supply of amazing remixes.
I am sad that I never got to see them perform live, but at least I got to enjoy one glorious combination of them with another of my favorite artists. You see, my favorite Daft Punk song is "Digital Love," so you can imagine my absolute joy when I went to see Porter Robinson live a few years ago, and he just so happened to perform his song "Fresh Static Snow," and as it seemed to wind down, some all-too-familiar sounds began to bleed through...
Take care, everyone. Stay strong, keep your heads up, and remember, Veridis Quo.
Did they break up or something? I was kinda hoping for an explanation on how or why there just ended
I have no true words to say, but to enjoy this quietly and leave, also felt wrong. Thank you for sharing your experience.
5459457
Yes, they broke up as of yesterday. I didn't really want to dwell on it, but perhaps I should make that clearer.
Edit: Okay, clarified it. Sorry for being a bit vague!
5459458
I do appreciate that, thank you.
5459468
Thank you very much for that
~It's over, isn't it? Why can't I move on?
I freaking love Daft Punk! Look, if Swedish House Mafia breaks up or something next, then...
5459488
Steven universe?
5459488
5459644
Oh, it is definitely Steven Universe... great song.
5459693
Definitely one of the better songs from SU ^-^. My new favorite is mr universe
As an avid listener of house music, it is so sad that they are parting ways. I'm definitely going to miss them. 😔
Thank you Daft Funk. The world won't be the same without you.
[uses Google Translate]
..."Green where"? Am I missing something (I suspect so), or is that translation bad?
Anyway, though, regarding the rest of the last line, thank you, and you too. :)
(I'm afraid I don't have much to say about the main body of the post, but it was a window into a world I don't have much of a view of. And I'm glad you got so much out of their music over the years. :))
Did you ever watch the anime that was made for them?
Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
It is a visual companion to Discovery, and animated by Toei Animation Studio. They (Daft Punk) had first wanted to do a live action film, but instead did an animation, mostly because of their love for the Japanese Anime Artist Leiji Matsumoto! In fact they actually got to work with Leiji, one can only wonder how much they must have geeked out that one of the masters of japanese animation wanted to work with thim.
To note Leiji is extremely inspired by French Films.
Daft Punk were huge fans of Captain Harlock and other animations by Leiji, and also say that those animations definitely inspired their songs theme of liberation and freedom from oppression!
5531215
I certainly am! And being somewhat familiar with Captain Harlock (my teaching partner back in Japan was a huge fan of the series), I can see the influence pretty plainly in Interstella.
So many good memories.
5531247
Indded, Leiji and Osamu Tezuka are huge influences for myself in many regards, I was a kid in germany when I watched the Galaxy 999 and the old Astro Boy cartoons!
Daft Punk will always be a huge influence, I was entranced with their music, though I will admit, my pops had me hooked onto a lot of good tracks from the likes of Tangerine Dreams, another group who was powerfully symphonic! Asia and Yes are another group to utilize synth with their music.
Still, to have seen their end, it definitely was a seal on an era, and one that certainly made me feel my age when they had announced it a while back!