Daft Punk Break Up
pitchfork.com
pitchfork.com
I am kind of glad to hear that Daft Pank is over and I say this as someone who their music means a lot to. The arc of their art is complete and there is nowhere left for them to go without it becoming forced, awkward or irrelevant: teenagers with attitude and samplers to elder statesmen recording with an orchestra.
As this is HN, does anyone remember their more interesting dives into technology: Daft Club [2] and the multi-angle DVD of D.A.F.T. [3]?
This quote [4] about Daft Club, and the state of music on the internet, from 2001 is really interesting in hindsight:
> It's great to find a new channel where there is an open access, open door to more, but not more than had to be done before. It's establishing a connection between people that listen to our music and ourselves. There's no limits of time, and it helps people get and listen to this music. A track that could have been done today can be online tomorrow. The other thing is to really express ourselves through the Internet.
> ...
> Napster is a cool thing with us. The important thing is to make a difference. Napster is a positive thing because it raises questions, it raises issues.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800022/
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20020804191122/http://www.daftcl...
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279758/
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20070609232158/http://music.yaho...
During my college years, one of my dorm mate’s dads was a famous Hollywood producer. He once said to me, “You want everyone to know your name and no one to know your face.”
Taking it a step further, we could quote Bill Murray:
I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘try being rich first.’ See if that doesn’t cover most of it.
https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2610/No-One-Recognized-Marily...
https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-marilyn-monroe-effect-the-...
My local neighbourhood has its fair share of nationally known famous faces. I’ve never once seen any of them treated like a celebrity because they don’t act like one.
The corollary to the S.E.P. field in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (SEP - Somebody Else's Problem Field - loved the concept for the ultimate invisibility cloak)
Even if you somewhat it, you don't really expect it.
One early morning at tourist area (where I'd already seen a few celebrities), my friend and I are playing Daytona USA and this sunglass-wearing dude comes down and sits next to us to play. He looks vaguely familiar, but I guessed I had just seen him there before — there were a lot of regulars at this arcade. I'm bragging, but not exaggerating, when I say we were world-competitive at this game. This guy was good, but we destroyed him.
After the race, the guy got up, smiled at both of us, said nothing, and left. My friend and I talked a bit about the race — a sort of post-race analysis we often did to see if there was anything new we could learn — and during that process it sort of dawned on us that we had just played against a NASCAR driver.
This reminds me of a celebrity encounter I had once. I walked into a Gold's Gym in Raleigh, and saw a guy doing triceps press-downs on the machine right by the path to the locker room. I had to walk past to get to the locker room and as I approached I realized I was looking at Arn Anderson (professional wrestler).
I was a bit shocked and as I walked by him I did a double take and blurted out something stupid like "Tell me you're not Arn Anderson!?!" Of course he dead-panned the whole thing and just looked at me and said "I'm not Arn Anderson". By this point I realized it was absolutely him, but I was too awe struck to think of anything intelligent to say, so I just kept walking.
Probably about as stupid as I've ever come off in public in my life. :-(
The conclusion of the story though, is that he wound up in the locker room while I was still getting ready for my workout and I got a chance to chat with him for a while. We talked about the "good ole days" of Crockett Promotions / WCW and the 4 Horsemen, etc., etc. He seemed like a nice guy. I just regret forgetting to ask for an autograph.
It turns out, that gym is (well, was... it's closed now) close to the arena in Raleigh where the WWE shows take place, and it used to be common-place for professional wrestlers to stop in when they were in town for shows. That just happened to be the first time I personally met any of them.
> A famous actress, who was just the warmest person ever
> Several rappers
> Several championship-winning athletes
> Michael Steele, who was apparently a Geek Squad regular
My favorite was probably the gentleman who I believe had been on the Cosby Show: he came in twice, both times to drop 5 figures on TVs. Dude singlehandedly saved my job.
I remember seeing the French ex-president in a retirement home (he was visiting his father) and I was thinking 'nah, can't be him, what would he do here' until I got confirmation from the people I was with that it was in fact him.
Celebrities on campus is likely also a much more normal thing at UCLA, USC and in LA in general.
Obviously Kraftwerk's robots look like them to a certain degree, so Daft Punk have taken the on stage anonymity further but the anti-pop star thing is pure Kraftwerk.
There was famously only one way to contact Kraftwerk, via a phone at their studio with ringer mechanism removed.
If you had the number, only given out by their lawyer, you rang a preset time of day when the handset would be lifted... if you were lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miWlfAlllOI&list=PLm69e5uphT...
it is a great coding music
MF Doom, Sia, the list goes on.
Then 4 normal looking guys show up and he's like "Oh right, they don't dress up like that all the time".
My hipster inspection is way out of date.
Is a question common asked
On his head a bucket of chicken bones
On his face a plastic mask He's the bastard son of a preacher-man
On the town he left a stain They made him live in a chicken house To try and hide the shame
He was born in a coop, raised in a cage
Children fear him, critics rage
He's half alive, he's half dead
Folks just call him Buckethead!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Comic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BBZVQ4zBcU&ab_channel=RBArc...
I suspect it has more to do with the fact that when he wasn’t actually being (arguably) the worlds best drummer, he wasn’t in people’s face and making himself known. Running into a random dude on a motorcycle in Wyoming, or sitting in the corner of a coffee shop reading a book, most people would never think “Rockstar”.
Of course Gene Simmons, Mick Jagger or even Geddy Lee all have very distinctive faces so they are kind of screwed in that regards.
If you wanna talk "you have no idea who this is but an incredibly prolific artist", I want to put forth Max Martin [0].
It's hard to be famous without being famous, which is what Daft Punk pulled off.
I would assert that being famous is a skill that not all famous people develop, thus the disparity between those who shun fame and those who don't think it's a problem.
I like Jerry Seinfeld, but he (or at least the persona he plays in public) has this habit of being unable to put himself in other's shoes.
What I find rather interesting is that if one search for Mafumafu's face, what one obtains is his virtual avatar, a nonexistent character by which he repræsents himself in most instances, and one has to add keywords such as “real” to see his actual face, — which is all the more interesting since he's actually quite beautiful and clearly puts quite a bit of effort into his appearance.
My favorites are, of course, the black meal artists who only go on stage in theatrical makeup under stage aliases such as “Necrobutcher” and “Zhaaral”, whose real names and even genders are often unknown behind the makeup.
It also permits one to hire additional stand-ins and perform in multiple places at the same time.
I know this is some very hardcore marketing realpolitik but this is it.
Sia covers her face because she's not pretty, not because 'it's art'.
Adele's albums are closeups of her face not anything else, because she's attractive there, that said, she always wore herself well enough it didn't matter that much.
One of the few 'not good looking' is Ed Sheeran, but he's at least young, he's not going age well in front of the camera, it may not matter that much.
Google 'famous singers' and they are all quite attractive. Shawn Mendez and Justing Bieber are both one in at least 10 000 attractive. The ladies it's much harder to tell because of their makeup.
What would have made this much more interesting is if Daft Punk decided to actually 'replace themselves' and just let others take on the helmets. If they really wanted to milk it they could have gone for 'multiple versions' i.e. a standing show in Vegas, NY and Duabi or something with stand-ins. That's completely selling out but hey. There are possibly some legit ways to do that, like actually getting extremely talented producers and artists into the masks for a while to help kick of their career. They could make some really nice PR out of a culty thing like that.
I wonder if any groups have stand ins ready to don the mantle for live performances if there were ever, for whatever reason, a double booking.
These songs transcend what I'd consider mashups, it's like they treated all of their olds songs as samples, rebuilding entirely new songs out of them. It took some of the more obscure songs and made them "whole"; take Steam Machine, which in of itself wasn't that great of a song...a bit boring if you will. Combined with Too Long and it's now a song full of energy and tempo.
There are many others like it. What they mostly have in common is taking the best ingredients from the fringy Human After All and the glitzy Discovery, finding a very interesting common ground.
It's not often I'd travel to watch the "same" show twice. That was a nuts setlist and show period.
Especially since my going to Madrid was via hearing about it from a hotel concierge and "Hey dad, I know we're here for your business, but can I go to this music festival, across a city neither of us know, that speaks a language I can maybe passably bang out?"
Bless non-helicopter parents. :)
It's so good.
I thought it was so cool afterwards to see a bunch of people covered head to toe in blue body paint like the aliens from Interstella 5555.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lollapalooza_lineups_b...
Best of luck to their next endeavors though, I hope they both continue to make music.
The counter point being that I saw Velvet Underground live and they sucked badly :D
If you get utterly fucked up with perception altering substances it won't really matter though.
(FWIW, I was very smug that I got a ticket to one of LCD Soundsystem's goodbye shows. It was awesome. They reunited a few years later, released albums and resumed touring ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Then followed it with a "Not Dead Yet Tour."
I've seen concerts with better music in small venues (DJ Spooky), I've seen crazier concerts (BHole Surfers) and more sensory beating ones (Chemical Brothers), but never one that was such a blast as theirs.
With any luck there will be a reunion within a decade or two.
Outside of doing seated gigs (ie something very firmly to set the tone in advance) I'm not sure how you could clearly set a tone that wouldn't upset a large portion of the audience. I'd skip a seated gig for sure.
Plus the demand would be off the charts. Horrifically expensive tickets bought maybe a year in advance. That'd be a lot of pressure to include hits that may not fit very well in (e.g. thinking of how Digital Love was left outta the 2007 show, which was absolutely the right move)
I was talking to someone and went "wait a second, I need to do something". I walked up to the DJ booth and asked him "Man, what is this song you are playing?!"
He smiled, pulled up a CD cover for Discovery and said "Congrats, you have been daft punked".
Such a powerful track... it kickstarted my passion for house and EDM in general.
Ah, the days when phones were on the wall with a cord too.
At least MTV did still play music back then. And the record industry wonders why file sharing sites took off? I loved limewire because I could find songs I liked, then I would grab everything else that person had and I discovered so much new content - I bought more CDs than I ever would have otherwise simply because I discovered stuff I didn't even know existed. I still haven't found anything that could match that discovery experience; it's kind of crazy really.
It was so weird but not enough to be off putting - it just made me want to learn more about who would do this. Delightful!
Folks go on to become producers, directors, stage actors, video game voice actors, music label owners, teachers...
It always seems like an interesting story that I would love to know more about, and yet I feel that the act of learning more would itself tarnish their shift, and I try to respect them by digging no further.
I'm a bit of a classic rock / prog rock fan. These bands are getting old, and they sometimes have staff changes as a result of band members dying of old age. Went to a Yes concert recently and have kind of mixed feelings about it. It's like Steve Howe and a backup band. I mean it's great that these older artists "still got it" and want to keep doing what they love, but from the point of view of a fan, maybe it's best to call it a day when your best work is firmly in the past.
I wonder if that is part of why they called it off. Maybe they've created all of the music they could both come up with? Maybe the creativity tank ran empty?
I think I read that the lead singer made the best music when on drugs but has since gotten clean. Unfortunately, the music he/they made sober wasn't as well received critically? Something like that.
But of course their break up is probably due to a disagreement between the two of them so it wouldn't have been possible if they don't want to spend time together.
They could have just left their costumes standing, as the gleaming pop-house god reservists that they are (except while temporarily leaving reservist status) and silently move on to doing other projects, as they've always done.
Really wonder what triggered the announcement. My guess is either heavy disagreement, perhaps about retiring the bots and continuing as Thomas and Guy-Manuel, or the total opposite, becoming aware that they were likely fading out of those roles forever and deciding that the bots deserve to go with a bang.
I just want new sample-based music. Fancy synths and orchestras sound awesome, but IMHO they are almost unmatched when it comes to chopping up samples and making incredible, emotional, catchy music out of it.
I remember my mind was blown when i first heard #3 Television rules nation / Crescendolls, when it transition back to Television with a drop... absolute masterpiece of electro music
I suspect the reason is the duo simply wanting to do different things. After all, they've been Daft Punk for almost 3 decades.
To me RAM sounds like an Air album, not a Daft Punk album. I don't consider that a bad thing though.
On the one hand I find this news horribly disheartening, on the other hand I am thrilled to see them go out on top. They have never had a bad album, and I’m my opinion they only got better as they went.
Godspeed you beautiful robots.
Likewise, I had a period of time listening to daft punk’s discovery that was fairly transformative. It completely, with no exaggeration, overhauled my understanding and appreciation of music.
Discovery, Radiohead’s Kid A, and Bjork’s Vespertine defined my late teens - an age that basically defined my musical tastes.
It’s interesting how music does such an amazing job of worming itself into your brain.
In high school my backpack had a small zipped pocket at the top specifically designed for a CD player. You ran your headphone cord through a gasket into the pocket, keeping your player safe and convenient. As a loner, it was splendid.
And then you always wished you had a CD player with just a _little_ more buffer so it wouldn't skip when you were running to class.
Pretty sure the target audience was runners. It had a strap on the back so you would attach it to your hand, and near the hinge was a hard slightly-rubbery plastic with little indentations for your fingers. It was incredibly comfortable to hold.
And the skip protection was absolutely top-tier. By some kind of magic, the laser could read the disc at any arbitrary speed up to some limit. It didn't just handle bumps, but weird sudden rotations that would change the speed of disc rotation relative to the laser. I think it claimed 40 seconds of skip protection, but I would jostle, spin, and bump it for 5 solid minutes and no skipping.
And the way the thing close made it very difficult to accidentally pop it open. Drop it, throw it, it's staying closed.
Of course, I paid for all that ruggedness. I think at the time, most portable CD players were around $75, and I think I paid $150 for it. Of course, this was over 20 years ago so my memory could be wrong.
Pretty sure I still have that player in a box somewhere.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-SL-SW890-Shockwave-Portable...
I'm envious of both his gear and the talent to use it so well.
Bless...
It makes me suspect that their live shows are much more true to their 2007 energy than their studio albums might lead you to believe.
Now I feel like the scene is mostly American. Any modern French electronic artist?
You mention Madeon which I think is more like "electro pop" or "nu disco" (I don't like that term but hey) so maybe you'll like the following if you don't know them...
Agar Agar:
or Kid Francescoli:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdixQDPA2h0
or, more on the chill side, L'Imperatrice...
"Erreur 404": https://youtu.be/eyk-Sliy8RU
and say "Parfum Theremine": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ksp63RJuaU
Feels like I'm giving away the secret sauce here but try French 79, Kid Francescoli, Sébastien Tellier, L'Impératrice, or Isaac Delusion.
Blue Planet Corporation - Blue Planet
Art of Noise - The Seduction of Claude Debussy
* L'Impératrice - ( A View to a Kill, many others )
* Busy P ( Il fait chaud - Busy P Remix by Corine )
That said, GL the song and video were great and no hiding the string of classics. I remember hearing Around the World on the radio for the first time and pulling my car over. I was in high school.
A few notes on this video:
1. I wonder if this was delayed due to the bomber in Nashville. Still seems almost too soon.
2. Obviously has black rock vibes, looks like one continuing on to the mythic show at the trash fence.
3. Suggests one member wanted to keep daft punk going, where the other had enough. Otherwise I would have expected a mutually assured destruction.
The symmetric hands around the dates suggest amicable closure prior to conflict of ruin, which would be for the best in any partnership.
Aww. It's no Discovery, but I quite like RAM. More than Human After All, anyway. "Contact" and "Giorgio" in particular are stand out tracks to me.
https://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/daft-punk/
Was an amazing thing to scroll through in 2013, and actually holds up well in modern browsers.
Interview of them in 1995: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQmVdGvoQXk
if anyone is nostalgic for the days when French electronic music was emerging, I recommend the Mia Hansen-Løve's movie "Eden" (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lIzEL9BoDc)
I don't think Daft Punk are the type of artists to screw over fans by creating "Last Show Evarrrr" and "Final Reunion Tour (It's serious this time)" type shows.
> I would not be at all surprised if you get the chance to see them perform together again.
People seem to be ignoring the meaning within the video. The way he clenches his fist before the explosion. The solitary walk into the sunset.
I would not be at all surprised if one of them was terminally ill.
I didn't rediscover Discovery until Tiesto's "Louder Than Boom" in a Tap Tap Revenge brought me into the world of electronic music. While many genres fell in and out of my taste growing up, electronic (and eventually French House in particular) never once faded. I'm infinitely thankful for Daft Punk and their art which has long been and will long be my chosen soundtrack for life.
Best of luck to them in whatever they move onto next
I used to play HL 2 while listening to Discovery, I know, kinda weird, and now every time I hear songs from this album I have HL2 flashbacks. Somehow these are some of the most vivid memories I have, I can still see the screen and the in game scenes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL4lHwjX9pM
The song Teachers calls out a bunch of Chicago house music artists in tribute and was their motivation for starting their first "tour" outside of France in that area.
I also remember listing to the live record (which is the Paris recording if I'm not mistaken) after it came out and it was very different of the one I saw. So definitely some live creation happened during that tour, or some in-between sets work maybe (if you don't believe in magic).
Side note and personal opinion, I think "Veridis Quo" would be the perfect soundtrack for this announcement, and is one of my all time favorites of them. Here's to a bright future for both of them hopefully!
Anyway, au revoir to a legendary group nevertheless.
I saw them at a festival, I guess it must have been around ‘97. I got to the stage a bit late and made my way to the front. It was loud. Like really loud.
The speaker stacks each side of the stage were ridiculously big. I got to the front just as they started playing ‘Around the World’, they had a bunch of dancers on stage dressed up, maybe as robots, and when the beat dropped there was an invisible wall of sound that passed through my body from head to toe to the beat of the music. It’s one of the first beat drops I remember experiencing and thinking wow.
It’s difficult to describe in words. The air around me literally was shifting more than the depth of my body, so it felt like an invisible wall of air/sound passing through you. And of course the whole crowd started dancing like it was going out of fashion. I’d never experienced energy like that at a gig.
I was pretty much into electronic music after that.
So what does it mean for such a meta-band to “break up” when they only existed during concerts and on records. Does that mean the people behind it won’t make more music? I sure hope not!
Only tangentially related, but The Archies were topping the charts all the way back in the 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar,_Sugar
Those that actually "quit" just quietly drift away out of the public scene.
A few years later I (re)discovered their music and went to the Alive 2007 show in Amsterdam, Heineken Music Hall.
During the show, they also played “Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You”, which was also produced by Thomas Bangalter.
The ‘Stardust mix’ has only been released on a limited edition (disc 2) of the Alive 2007 album:
https://www.discogs.com/Daft-Punk-Alive-2007/release/1141123
Edit: it seems it is on Spotify. Not so limited anymore. :-)
Human After All, Veridus quo, and that one love song were a few of my favorites. Still listen to them whenever I feel down or just need something uplifting to listen to.
Their songs always made me feel happy. They're great.
I feel like it's been a while in coming, but I assume they're breaking up simply because they're getting older, and probably want to step out of the limelight.
Daft punk is great. Like robots from outer space coming to bring a bit of joy in the world and leaving it better than when they first came.
They're a duo. Keep an eye on 2/22/22.
Recreating Daft Punk's Da Funk with Overtone and Leipzig - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446223 - April 2016 (98 comments)
Aerodynamic by Daft-Punk in 100 lines of code with Sonic Pi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11033953 - Feb 2016 (69 comments)
Daft Punk Lego Minifig raytraced in your browser. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7550736 - April 2014 (2 comments)
Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” explained using music theory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491174 - March 2014 (1 comment)
How Daft Punk Created One of Their Most Famous Samples - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7011035 - Jan 2014 (94 comments)
Daft Punk Didn't "Get Lucky" When It Created This Summer's Biggest Hit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5996054 - July 2013 (82 comments)
Desire for Daft Punk's iconic helmets creates cottage industry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5770913 - May 2013 (12 comments)
Anatomy of a Mashup: Definitive Daft Punk visualised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595277 - May 2011 (13 comments)
Guy crafts a Daft Punk helmet in 17 months - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1539509 - July 2010 (22 comments)
This is an animated movie set to the album Discovery. No dialogue other than the music of the album. Done by Toei Animation, a notable Japanese animation studio.
You may have seen the music videos for One More Time and Harder Better Faster Stronger. They were just part of a full narrative arc.
The animation was also overseen by the manga and anime legend Leiji Matsumoto [0] (famous for Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers), others). According to the Interstella 5555 Wikipedia page [1], Daft Punk wanted to work with Leiji Matsumoto because Captain Harlock had been a big influence on them when they were kids.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiji_Matsumoto
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstella_5555:_The_5tory_of...
Best of luck with whatever they chose to work on next.
The pyramid / Close Encounters concept was amazing. But there was nothing live - nor 'alive' - about that show. Compare this to what they were doing in 1997, when they were actually remixing 'Homework' in real-time with an ingenious midi network of synths, samplers, sequencers, and drum machines - and the 2007 era just seemed to pale in comparison.
Even the late Phillipe Zdar was not into it - and told a mutual friend that 'It's just a light show'. I feel like he appreciated what I did about the audacity of that Alive 1997 era.
With all that said - I'm pretty sad to know that they're no longer doing their thing.
Oof.
Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qxe-QOp_-s