Now there was an extra emphasis on a synth-heavy sound. It feels like the turning point for the duo, and whilst their image is a major factor in how they’ve managed to make an impact, the music always comes first, and with Discovery they had truly evolved from the raw sound of Homework. It also saw the evolution of their masks into a full-on interactive, robot disguise. Featuring arguably one of the better first four-track runs of any dance album ever with ‘One More Time’, ‘Aerodynamic’, ‘Digital Love’, and ‘Harder, Better, Faster Stronger’, it turned the duo into a global force. The song’s influence however can be felt heavily on follow-up Discovery.ĭaft Punk truly broke into the mainstream with their 2001 sophomore record Discovery. Virgin reportedly offered Bangalter $3 million to create an album but he turned it down and went back to focussing on Daft Punk. Following this tour, Thomas would form the side project Stardust with DJ Alan Braxe and Benjamin Diamond, releasing just a single song, the now legendary ‘Music Sounds Better With You’. It would later become the basis for their Alive 1997 live album. The pair followed the album’s release with a wide-spanning club tour titled Daftendirektour in which they adapted their home studio set up for the intimate club stages. When asked by Melody Maker’s David Stubbs on their motivations, the pair remarked on how it was part of determination not to add to rows and rows of pop icon faces: “it's one of the rules, and we want to break rules." It also marked the pairs first adoption of masks. Critically acclaimed, and featuring tracks such as the much sampled and adored ‘Around The World’, alongside experimental tribute ‘Teachers’ and the aforementioned ‘Da Funk’, the album was heralded as the revival of house music, bringing a departure from Eurodance music which had dominated the nineties. At only the age of 22, the pair released their debut album Homework which would go on to influence a whole new generation of artists. Eventually, they formed a creative partnership with Virgin Records, determined to keep as much creative control as possible.
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Something called 'Easy On Me' by Adele is dropping next weekįrom 1995 onwards they were hard at work creating a series of singles, including the much lauded ‘Da Funk’ as well as batting off various record labels. With Brancowitz going his separate way from the pair, ‘Daft Punk’ was born.
Their work was trashed in the Melody Maker by rock critic Dave Jennings, one line from his scathing review of which would stick with the pair when he called the music ‘daft punky thrash’. That however wasn’t always the case.Īfter meeting at school in 1987, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo would go on to form the rock band Darlin in 1992 (alongside Laurent Brancowitz who would later go on to be part of Phoenix).
For the most part, the pair have let their music do the talking, as they remain hidden inside their robotic chrome disguises. Daft Punk had many: they also had the ability to completely disappear, remove themselves from the limelight and whenever they decided to grace us with a return, the world stood still and listened.įor nearly thirty years, only one thing has been certain when it came to Daft Punk, and that was their ability to defy both convention and your expectations. So many DJs, dance artists, and groups have a peak moment at the top of their field or that one song that goes on to define them in music history. Yet one constant has remained - that being the impact Daft Punk. Ever-changing alongside how we listen to and consume music, how and where we express ourselves dancing to it, and even down to the way we create it over the year, each of those many factors has a major effect on what we even consider dance music to be. It’s a genre of music that is constantly fluid and always evolving.
It’s incredibly rare for a single artist to define a genre of music in the way that Daft Punk has done for dance. Here, we will be reflecting on the history of one of music’s most influential pioneers, their impact, and what lasting effect they will leave on culture itself. Whilst they may not have been under the spotlight, the pair have still been hard at work contributing to some of the biggest songs of the past few years in unexpected ways. When the painful news that Daft Punk had called an end to their time as a creative duo broke, it was a surprise - considering their last album came almost eight years ago, and a tour nearly fourteen with no sign of fissures along the way. By 2021, we didn't think that much could shock us.
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