Chapter 1

Give Life Back To Music

“Usually we just don't do interviews,” Thomas Bangalter told triple j's Robbie Buck in 2006. “We really try to communicate by making music or making weird things rather than interviews. We like to play between fiction and reality.”

For all their anonymity, Daft Punk have plenty to say once you get them talking. Bangalter and co-conspirator Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have a deep knowledge of music and of their place in the history of it. Not that they're in the habit of overstating it.

Right from the beginning of their career, people have been saying that Daft Punk's music feels like an apt summation of all the different forms of dance music that have filled nightclub floors since the 70s. But Bangalter was never too keen to take that much credit.

We're really not the right people to give a lesson about dance music or house music Thomas Bangalter - triple j, 1997

“We're not the kind of people who were there in 1987 or 88,” Bangalter told triple j's Richard Kingsmill in 1997. “We were 12 or 13 years old.

“We're really not the right people to give a lesson about dance music or house music.

"We got really into this music being around 17 or 18 which was around 1992. I don't think we represent the history of dance music or whatever.

“Of course, people might find some influences. But I don't think that's a good reason not to listen to those original tracks from ‘87.

"Or those original [late 70s] disco tracks. Our music should not sum up any other peoples'.”

But, as far as influence goes, the duo draw less from individual records and more from creating something completely unique. Daft Punk's sound is undeniably distinct, which was always their goal.

“The main influence we had in music was always about innovation and being creative,” Bangalter told Kingsmill.

“So that means we might have been influenced by people who were doing something original and innovative and saying 'That's really innovative, we should try to seek out something that could be really new'.”

They were in great company. The electronic scene of the mid-1990s was absolutely flourishing as artists taking significant risks were being rewarded with acclaim, record sales and monstrous tours and festival slots, particularly in Europe.

“That's the good thing in electronic music today,” Bangalter said. “Of course there are a lot of clichés and things that are not really moving, but at the same time you find some records and some bands that are really innovative and that's a great thing.”

Innovation was as important on the band's most recent album, 2013's Random Access Memories, as it was when they began.

“We've always tried to do something different,” Bangalter told triple j's The Doctor in 2013.

“When we released our first record Homework, it was a different proposition to what was around in pop music at the time. It felt like Discovery was something different too. We like the idea of reinventing ourselves at each step.

“Our first three records became somehow influential, it might have defined a certain sound now, but it's always been really important for us to try and bring that difference. It was important when we started and it's still important today.”

Humour was also important to the duo. While they don't try and make ‘funny' music, they don't want to be taken too seriously either.

“We are human beings like everybody,” Bangalter said. “You can have fun and we think sometimes in music [people] are taking themselves far too seriously. There was just this mood about having fun. It doesn't mean it's very funny music. It can just have a bit of a sense of humour.”

The duo's first album, 1997's Homework, was an instant smash. It has sold millions of copies and charted highly in plenty of territories around the world.

“At the time we were doing the album, we weren't really thinking of doing an album,” Bangalter told Kingsmill.

“The whole house and techno and electronic scene was really single orientated, there were not that many long play albums of dance music. So, we were always more focused on making singles.

“Then we put together some singles we had made and because of the exposure of the music we really started to think about making an album.

“We enjoy making music. We don't see an album like two or three strong tracks and the rest are fill-ins. We don't have favourite tracks on the album that we think are stronger than others. We really took the time to select and choose each track to make it a good one. To make it equal.”

We had this love of creation and this respect for creativity in all its forms. Music was only one aspect of it. Thomas Bangalter - triple j, 2006

Happy accidents are a bit of a running theme for Daft Punk.

Following the release of the duo's strange 2006 arthouse/science fiction film Daft Punk's Electroma, Thomas Bangalter told triple j's Robbie Buck that their very careers happened by chance.

“Making music on a professional level was more of an accident,” he said.

“Whereas we knew from the start that we had this love of creation and this respect for creativity in all its forms. That music was only one aspect of it.

“Meeting this kind of success with the music gave us an opportunity to create in every form and to invent this small visual universe. Collaborating with different artists and allowing us to use the music as vector for a different form of creation.”

And, much like with Homework, the duo had minimal plans to make an album when their most recent record, 2013's Random Access Memories, started to come to fruition.

“There was not really a grand plan initially,” Bangalter told The Doctor in 2013. “This record was more accidental, I think. We started to go into the studio and do some experiments. We didn't know it would be a new record.”

It turned out to be a monumental smash hit album, going to number one in countless countries the world over and selling millions of copies at a time where people really weren't buying a lot of records.

In a world where more and more human beings are sounding robotic in pop music, we like the idea of robots sounding more and more human. Thomas Bangalter - triple j, 2013

It was, once again, completely new and unique territory for Daft Punk. The record was made with a live band featuring some of the best jazz and funk players on the planet.

“We tried to team up with the best musicians in the world,” Bangalter told The Doctor in 2013. “So they could play not only how we intended to, but ten times better, with so many different levels of nuance.”

The Frenchmen just wanted to know if they could pull it off.

“In the end, what we tried to do was somehow look at the fact that most pop music today is being created purely or mostly with computers and to see what was maybe lost in this process,” Bangalter said.

“This omnipresence of technology should not forbid the ability to make music in as many different ways as possible.

“'Maybe we can bring something from a golden age of music back into the present right now? Is it still possible today to make pop music with great players?' Because it's not being done at all these days. It felt like we were doing something special.”

Bangalter said that they were left cold by much of the pop music they were hearing on the radio at the time and worried they'd be left cold by any new electronic music they tried to create.

“There's nothing judgmental about that,” he said. “We're not saying, 'Oh the music is not as good' we just felt, as human beings, disconnected from the kind of feelings we used to feel with the music. There's nothing logical about it, it's something purely emotional.”

The album featured a string of singles, none of them bigger than ‘Get Lucky' and ‘Lose Yourself To Dance', both featuring two of the biggest names in music production history; Pharrell Williams and Chic's Nile Rodgers.

“We liked the two songs we did with Pharrell and Nile because they really represent this idea of bridging the generations together,” Bangalter said.

“What Nile Rodgers represents for dance music and R&B in America in the 70s and 80s, and what Pharrell represents in the same genre in the 90s and 2000s, it felt really interesting to connect them together to create the music of the present and possibly the music of the future as well. Conceptually, it felt right for us.”

It felt right for them to bring the worlds of Daft Punk as robots and Daft Punk as people closer together as well.

“In the world right now where more and more human beings are sounding robotic in pop music, we like the idea of these robots sounding more and more human,” Bangalter said.

“It's the voice of Daft Punk and it's the voice of what we do, so it was natural to have this combination of the robot voices with these instruments.”

Chapter 2

Face To Face

For a band so monumentally enormous, Daft Punk's touring regime is practically non-existent. They've been on just two big tours, Daftendirektour in 1997 and Alive 2006/2007 around a decade later. That's it.

The shows may have been few and far between, but those who witnessed them to this day regard their performances as some of the most spectacular live music experiences of all time.

“When the album came out the work really started; touring and promotion and playing live, which is harder than just chilling in the studio and making tracks,” Bangalter told Kingsmill in 1997.

It's not that the band doesn't enjoy their time on the road. With the release of every new album, the band have had distinct reasons as to whether they would tour or not.

Their Daftendirektour saw the duo bring an approximation of their studio set up on stage. Bangalter explained that there were exacting standards that made the live experience a more labour intensive and cumbersome proposition, but one that allowed them to perform with both energy and freedom.

“What we've tried to do was to bring a lot of the studio equipment on stage, as well as light equipment and video projections, so that we could use it in a different way every night,” he told Kingsmill in 1997. “So that means there's nothing pre-recorded.

“In a very non-linear way, we could play the live show backwards or just jam with it and do a lot of improvisation. It would change from one night to another and that was what we enjoyed, we were bringing something different every night.

“We're not really interested in those live acts that just press play on the computer and then fake twiddling some knobs. Electronic music is quite static already so it's quite hard to make it really feel alive. That's what we were trying to do.”

Technically, it was really hard to render the right way the second album on stage. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo - triple j, 2007

With 2001's Discovery, Daft Punk hit a whole new level of immense popularity.

Which makes it particularly odd that they didn't perform a single live show in support of its release.

“We didn't find the right way to tour with the second album, which was a really complex album,” de Homem-Christo told triple j's Robbie Buck in 2007.

“At the time, we didn't find the solution to be really happy and comfortable with the right way to perform live on stage. Technically it was really hard to render the right way the second album on stage.

“The Discovery album is really complex and really rich and really full of instruments, different parts and stuff. Coming from Homework, which was a really minimal album, Discovery was much more difficult to perform on stage.

“For example, on Homework, we brought our own studio on stage, it was a few drum machines, a few samplers, we started the show like that. Discovery was impossible to do that way on stage.”

But the rapid changes in technology meant Daft Punk could bring their entire catalogue to the live stage by 2006, following the release of their 2005 album Human After All.

“Now the technology, light-wise and music-wise, we are really more comfortable with what we can do and what we're doing now on stage,” de Homem-Christo said.

“The biggest difference now is we can blend and mix all the tracks we did from the first, second and third albums all together. The pitch and the tone and speed of the songs all work together to have something that's really more fun and enjoyable to make. We are really comfortable with the way we can do it now.”

“It was a question of priorities I think,” Bangalter told Robbie Buck in 2006. “Also finding the right kind of technology and the right momentum to express what we wanted to do, how we wanted to express it on stage.

“The situation has really changed in the last ten years - we've found that now is really the time with the kind of music and art we are creating, that we can now have the right kind of technology and context to express ourselves.”

That Alive tour featured the robots performing inside a massive pyramid, with immense lights and visuals to match the epic soundtrack.

“It's an intense visual and audio stimulation,” Bangalter said. “Lights and colours and sounds and frequencies. It's a very physical experience with a lot of surprises. We really tried to put it as a show, with this robot personnel that we have.

“It's definitely something we never saw on stage earlier. It's something quite new for us and quite new for our audience. We've had a tremendous response so far so that makes us happy.”

“We really took the time to take care of everything with the show,” de Homem-Christo said. “We have the right people around us.

“You have to see it, it's full of different parts. We are two robots in this pyramid with a lot of different really French, state of the art light show around us. Lights that never stop. It's full of videos and full of lights and full of colours – it's nonstop as well as the music.

“It's quite an intense experience that we wanted to have. The music and the lights go together for more than an hour. It's a bit hard to explain, but I can say we did the best we could to make something really intense.”

For many Daft Punk super fans, it was worth the wait. And the band agree, even though getting through a show wearing a massive robot helmet proved to be a substantial workout.

“It's really hard up there,” de Homem-Christo said. “It's really hot, the temperature is rising fast when people are enjoying the show.”

The Alive tour made it to Australia at the end of 2007, but sadly that's where the Daft Punk live experience ended. Besides a couple of one-off appearances at the Grammy Awards, the band haven't played live since they laid waste to a sold out Sydney Showground almost ten years ago.

“The last time we played live was in Australia,” Bangalter told triple j's The Doctor in 2013. “The most recent concert we did was in December 2007. The Australian crowds were the last ones to see us live so far.

“There is no plans to play this record [Random Access Memories] live right now. We spent five years working on this record, releasing it is the first step. We just like to have people experience it, the record being the focal point.”

Chapter 3

Robot Rock

While Daft Punk didn't adopt their famous robot personas until after the release of their first album, the duo were never interested in occupying the spotlight.

“Staying anonymous the way we decided to was a good safety net,” Bangalter told Kingsmill in 1997. “Now the album, the name and the music is very successful and we stay quite down-to-earth this way, I think.

“We're really happy about the way things have finally gone. We really like it that way. Especially now that the album has been released in 40 countries.

“It's mainly instrumental music. We stand against a lot of ideas regarding the star system and the way music is sold with a face. The way the face is sometimes more important than the music itself. We really were intending to do the opposite and maybe sell the music for the music itself.

“We really wanted to share the music with people and people that were really just into the music we were doing, not into our face.”

It is an attractive image, but also a very repulsive image. Robots are cool, but a world only populated by robots is really scary. Thomas Bangalter - triple j, 2006

Vice Media's Piers Martin was there as the robot idea was coming to fruition and this piece gives a good indication of the rationale behind the decision for such a bold image.

But, by 2006, Bangalter had some new insights into why the image was so fitting, and it wasn't just to cover their faces.

“There was always a conscious statement of the importance of technology in the art and in the creative aspect of what we were doing,” he told triple j's Robbie Buck that year.

“The robotic images are a good metaphor for this kind of integration between technology and art.

"It came out as something that was more and more important.

"At the same time, we were witnessing the ever-growing importance of technology in everybody's life. So, this robotic image was just a good metaphor for that.

“It is an attractive image, but also a very repulsive image. Robots are cool, but a world only populated by robots is really scary. So, it's both. It's really turning on and scaring us at the same time.”

The following year de Homem-Christo espoused that Daft Punk were no ordinary robots, which, in hindsight, makes Random Access Memories, released six years later, make a whole lot of sense.

“I don't know if robots have personalities, but I think maybe we are special robots that are maybe human after all,” he told Robbie Buck. “We try to be a little bit human. Maybe we've managed to put a little bit of emotion.”