FUNK YOU

Good Times by Chic. One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic. 1999 by Prince. Blue Monday by New Order. Groove Is in the Heart by Deee-Lite. Da Funk by Daft Punk. Around the World by Daft Punk. Get the picture?

TAXI DRIVER

We've just left LA's Boss Nova, Daft Punk's beat still pulsing in our heads like a metronome that won't quit. Our cab driver is mean-looking, close-cropped, looking askance at the crowd of LA ravers milling about, as if wishing, like De Niro, for a real rain to fall.

"Where you just been?"

Err, to see Daft Punk. They're sort of a French techno band and …

"Daft Punk? I love them!" He brightens up.

You're into techno?

"Sure! Twelve years. Ever since I was in the military. Daft Punk were on! I can't believe I missed them!"

And we spend the next 20 minutes discussing Orbital with Travis Bickle...

THE BRITISH ARE COMING! (OH, AND THE FRENCH …)

American white rock is dead. Everyone knows it. The varnished zombies going through their croaky cod-grunge motions on MTV know it. Ironically, Kurt Cobain is more alive now than any of these clueless combos will ever be. The big first-wave surfers of post-punk US rock – Rollins, Sonic Youth, REM – are still around, but not going any place. The second wave of post-88 grunge died away with Nirvana. And the third wave, the Offsprings, the Green Days, the No Doubts, have the outer garb and posturings of teen rebels but are clearly as much the visual projection of record-company board meetings as the characters in any Coca-Cola or Nike ad campaign.

MTV know the game is up, too. Which is why they're in the process of ditching spade-loads of their 120 Minutes leftfield coverage and courting the new wave of what they've cutely termed "electronica". Go into Virgin Megastore on LA's Sunset Strip and display-stand after display-stand is blaring the wares of the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, Underworld, even Morcheeba. Et, bien sur, Daft Punk.

A few years ago, this wouldn't have happened. Primal Scream cut Screamadelica, their seminal 1991 rock/funk/dub monsterpiece, and the Stone Roses were rolling on the back of the baggy, trippy Fool's Gold. Both created enormous waves over here; Guy-Manuel De Homen Christo describes Screamadelica as an inspirational album for Daft Punk: "One of the albums first to set off an explosion in our heads."

In the States, mainstream rock journos dismissed them as "typical English hairdresser disco" – caught up in hidebound notions of "authentic" music being something that composed solely of T-shirts, long hair, guitars, "real" songs and cool goatees.

Now that whole lumberjack nonsense has gone timber, and so Daft Punk are here in LA, a big drone in the general buzz about imported dance. They're DJing at the after-show to the premier of The Saint (which is being pushed massively on every billboard and, of course, features Orbital on the soundtrack) and playing the Boss Nova, one of a number of techno/rave clubs now dotted about the West Coast.

They've been put up at the Argyll – a huge, grey, chic, art-deco hotel that sits, serene and incongruous on the Sunset Strip opposite the legendary Hyatt, facing down the hill with a view of skyscrapers and smog to kill for. It's the hotel of most people's dreams. Daft Punk, however, aren't looking too goggle-eyed.

"It's very nice, but … pfff," says Thomas Bangalter, making one of those ineffable French noises that express infinite shades of frustration. "If it had been up to us, we would have stayed in some little sleazy motel, y'know, out of town. Some place with atmosphere. That would have been more us."

HOMEWORK

Here's what we know about Daft Punk.

1. They met when aged 12 and 13 and formed their first group, Darlin', in their mid-teens, a lo-fi guitary outfit who were trying to follow the English anyone-can-do-it basement DIY aesthetic, putting out one of their own tracks in 1992 on a compilation on Stereolab's Duophonic label.

2. A Maker review of said track lambasted it as "Daft Punk". Having already decided to ditch guitars, they sarcastically leapt on the insult and took it as their name, sowing the seeds of future confusion. "We love playing around with labels," says Thomas.

3. Daft Punk don't have management as such. They have a "mate", who helps them out, a go-between. When Virgin France need to liaise with the band, they have to trawl the likeliest Parisian cafes and bars to track down said mate.

4. Thomas's father, Daniel Bangalter, wrote the 70s daft-disco hit D.I.S.C.O. and the Gibson Brothers' Cuba. Yet the group disclaim any influence on the part of this pop parent.

5. Guy-Manuel De Homen Christo is, as his name would suggest, rumoured to be of aristocratic stock. His ancestors may well have ridden at force against Henry V at Agincourt.

6. Daft Punk dismiss all such idle speculation about their backgrounds as entirely irrelevant. They have no desire to be gawped at like pop icons – hence their ubiquitous masks.

7. They're said to be surly, defensive and uncommunicative.

SURLY? NOUS?

First impressions of the duo go some way to dispelling this last point. They're accompanied by Cedric, their road manager, a rather glum and stubbly string bean of a fellow, but Thomas is chatty to a fault and the taciturn Guy, who in previous interviews has sat back with the menacing and silent air of Oddjob in Goldfinger, bustles in with interjections of his own. Mind you, given that most interviews start out asking them what it's like to be the French Chemical Brothers, it's not surprising that they clam up a bit. Daft Punk are nothing like the Chemical Brothers. They lack the Chemicals' rocky, serious-as-cancer pyromania. If they're like anybody, in spirit it's Kraftwerk.

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Their almost Eurovisionary insistence on the big, banal boom-boomabang approach to the backbeat, their silly vocoders, their synth wah-wahs and jingly chants might seem as simple as tick-tock, mere French naivety. But, much as Kraftwerk infuriated the hippies with their disingenuous paeans to new technology, Daft Punk infuriate many dance purists with their avowed intention to be heard by as many people as possible, their declared love of kitsch icons such as Barry Manilow and their unabashed love of dumb pop. "We just don't tell lies," says Guy. "We liked Barry Manilow when we were younger. Too many bands want to look cool, they won't admit what they really liked. We like everything; we don't care."

Thomas: "Of course, when the album came out on Virgin the underground people were saying: 'Oh no, a major label, it's the end of the world, it's all over for Daft Punk as an authentic thing.' We hate that. For us, we make music to share with people. There might be some artists who say: 'I only want to be heard by 1,000 people maximum,' but only very few."

But Daft Punk are a clever tease. Bear with them and their lo-fi house backbeat unfolds as subtly as systems music becomes not an irritant but a trance, taking you from plastic to primal in easy stages. Around the World, the new single, is a classic case in point. When I first heard it, it seemed too repetitive, too silly. Now barely an hour goes by without it dancing through my head, from ear to ear, like a techno pied piper. The video, too, is similarly, meaninglessly transfixing, with mummies, bathing belles, headshrunk bodypoppers and robot-dancing astronauts performing a sort of Busby Berkeley number. As Spinal Tap once observed, there's a fine line between clever and stupid – and Daft Punk dance it beautifully.

(AT LAST) THE FUTURE IS HERE

Five years ago, Daft Punk would have been America's worst nightmare. Do they really think they can crack the States now?

Thomas: "Sure. It's big in the UK, getting big in Europe and it can be in the States, maybe because people are bored with grunge bands. There's so many of them, all the same, all bad. Even if it's good, it's not original."

"All the good rock stuff has already been done," snorts Guy.

Of course, we've heard all this before. Guitars out, samplers in; rock out, dance in. The harbingers of doom have been sniping thus since about 1981, and over 16 years on the rock guitar has refused to wither away. Even now it's hard to see the Great European Electronica Invasion, or whatever, making much headway in the mid-West. The Rolling Stones will still be swelling stadia into their 70s and in a few months' time, millions will be gathering together to hear Oasis, the last vast outpost of trad-indie rock, singing along to every word like dance never happened.

Yet things are changing. For new bands, there are economic factors to consider.

"Today, it's possible to make a record in your bedroom at a cheap price," says Thomas. "Our album, Homework, is cheaper than nearly any rock album. No studio expenses, producers, engineers. We're not saying there is a right way or wrong way to go about things, but this is certainly a way.

"When we started to make music, we were just trying to form the teenage band everyone wants to be in. Back then, a sampler was much more expensive than a guitar. Now, they're cheaper."

What's more, there's a feeling that with the onset of the Internet mobile phones, mobiles, faxes, the digital age just around the corner and computers upon us that the future has finally arrived. Bleeps and sequencers are the soundtrack to life. Thomas leaps in enthusiastically.

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"Sure, and the net makes things more accessible, too. You can have the same access on a small site as a big site. You can sell records without leaving your bedroom, and you don't need a set of big producers. You won't need to go knocking on the doors of record companies, or A&R people or magazines with piles of tapes they never listen to …"

Steady on. All this is in danger of putting me out of a job.

F*** THE FRONT NATIONALE

Strange, but when you list the pioneers and groundbreakers of electronic music since the 70s, you'll find they're nearly all European. Kraftwerk. DAF. Giorgio Moroder. Yello. Front 242. Liaisons Dangereuses.

Thomas considers the point.

"I think even with Kraftwerk, it's like people playing ping-pong with America – from Dusseldorf to Detroit, y'know? But in France, all we have are the regular discotheques. There is no real club culture.

"Which is why the government is so against it," interjects Guy. "They don't know what it can be – they just think of evil and drugs."

What do the French make of Daft Punk?

"They hate us," spits Thomas. "Take Les Inrockuptibles, the biggest French rock magazine. They had a big piece on us, calling us cheesy, mainstream stuff. We did a four-page interview with this magazine. The editor was always telling us: 'Yeah, we're really excited about Daft Punk, it's great a French success at last.' But then he went away and heard us properly and hated it so he insisted on the magazine carrying a bad review."

Daft Punk early on felt a disenchantment with the French underground scene – lots of studenty types in black hanging around listening with cool passivity to imported indie.

"Maybe when we were 16 and at gigs, Dinosaur Jr, Primal Scream, rock was OK," remembers Thomas, a wise elder of 22. "But then at 17, we looked around and thought, What is the point of these guys, doing nothing? The gigs were full of people doing nothing and we felt we were wasting our time, so young, in this kind of place. It's sad that we are from France and the worst review we've ever had is in a French magazine."

Given that the country appointed a Minister for Rock, it's strange that France has made such a pitiful contribution to pop and rock culture. It's a bit like the Germans having a Minister for Comedy. Only with the rap explosion led by the likes of MC Solaar a few years back did they break their duck.

"The problem in France is there is no structure," explains Thomas. "Sure, there was a Minister for Rock, but the worst thing for kids is for the government to get involved in rock. We don't have this scene of magazines, venues – not like London, with gigs all week. In France, there are maybe three or four venues."

Depressingly, Daft Punk emerge from France at a time when the country is lurching frighteningly to the right. Jean Marie Le Pen's evil, racist, anti-Semitic Front Nationale command over 10% of the vote. In the south of the country, they even have overall control of certain local councils and were instrumental, at an administrative level, for the jailing of two members of French rap crew NTM for performing a F*** Tha Police type song.

In a sense, France now is how England was just after punk in the 70s, when the British National Front was so worryingly prominent that the Anti-Nazi League was set up specifically to block it, with a whole welter of newly politically conscious post-punk bands backing the ANL up with vocal support and benefit gigs.

Daft Punk certainly have strong feelings about the Fascist scum poisoning their home country, but despair at the prospect of a similar movement galvanising the youth of France.

Thomas: "It's hard to move people, especially as they are becoming more right-wing. The amount of young people who voted for Chirac was incredible. He presented this easy solution and it was depressing to see how they were fooled by his speeches. He was only interested in becoming President, not changing things. The problem with people is that they expect the Government to bring solutions. And the Front Nationale is an even more radical version of that."

FACELESS, NOT MINDLESS

Daft Punk's insistence on wearing masks is more than a gimmick; it's connected with their determination not just to add to the rows and rows of pop icons, faces here today and gone tomorrow.

Guy: "It's OK, but once you've seen three or four pictures of these guys, it gets very boring. Also, it's one of the rules, and we want to break rules."

Does it worry you when people say that Daft Punk are THE dance band to listen to this year? Implying that you've got a 12-month shelf life?

Thomas throws up his arms in despair: "What can we do about it? Since the beginning, we're trying to do our thing, not showing our face, showing we can do it with just music, that the music can be popular, not us."

"And, of course, there's been this big hype, but we don't care about anything," growls Guy. "Things are growing BECAUSE we don't care. And, if next year there's another Daft Punk, fine, good for them. We'll stop when we stop making good music."

Thomas: "The most embarrassing part of the hype was all this stuff about the bidding war, the rumours about Daft Punk, and all this expectation and people saying they've heard the album's good but they hadn't heard it themselves yet. And then there was this: 'You MUST like Daft Punk.' And, of course, that's the last thing you want to say to people. We want them to judge for themselves."

LA got to judge Daft Punk at the Boss Nova, a rammed rave bar clearly too small to cope with the surging demand, with a queue stretching right round the corner, punters all but sawing off arms and legs and offering them to the security guards on the door in their eagerness to get in.

Merely DJing, Daft Punk start inauspiciously. They're not loud enough. The foppish LA technophiles jabber over the top, one or two exchanging glances as if to say, THIS is what the fuss is about? Then, as if by sheer cumulative attrition, the bouncing backbeat gets right inside your head, right inside your bone marrow and I'm in a roomful of hypnotised, jigging, nodding dogs, me as much as anybody.