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Once the duo found its bearings, it hit the stratosphere. In the Homework era, Daft Punk used advancing tech and up-and-coming audiovisual artists to execute its vision of carrying the power and kinetic energy of the rave scene out to a worldwide audience. The monster mash set to “Around the World” helped put Michel Gondry on the radar of more fans and fellow artists in the years before he would wow audiences with era-defining work like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Spike Jonze directed Big City Lights - the short, sad story of an anthropomorphic dog, which doubles as the video for the duo’s breakout single, “Da Funk” - the same year he picked up directorial duties on Being John Malkovich. (In the BBC’s 2015 retrospective Daft Punk Unchained, it is suggested that, as the group began to take off, big-name artists like Janet Jackson came round looking for beats but left empty-handed.) The singles that would grace 1997’s Homework were met with enthusiasm by a fertile crop of videographers soon to make the jump to motion pictures.
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Daft Punk retained control of its art and creative direction and rarely made cynical money moves. Bangalter’s father had been a disco producer of some renown in the ’70s, logging hits with local acts like the singing duo Ottawan, the family band the Gibson Brothers, and others his son’s ease in navigating the business aspect of his career was as much informed by a sense of history as his sample-speckled music was. Traversing the vibrant early-’90s European rave scene, the duo seemed to find new footing in the propulsive sound of thumping, programmed drums, a literal expression of the forward advance of new technologies that would alter not just the sound of music but the methods of making and experiencing it. They tried their hand at shoegaze in their first band, Darlin’, named in honor of the chipper 1967 Beach Boys tune and famously written off in one withering review as “daft punky thrash,” a dig they would use to their advantage in their next endeavor. They played a good game.Īs visionary as they were, in many ways Thomas and Guy-Man arrived at the right place and the right time, growing up in France adjacent to explosions in both rock and roll and electronic music. They’re potential retirees in their mid-40s. They’re superstars you might not notice in a supermarket. They bridged the gap between the music of their childhood and the disparate sounds of pop in their adulthood. What set Daft Punk apart from many of their fellow electronic-music evangelists (Moby, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold), the classic-rock icons they grew up idolizing (the Beach Boys, Kiss, Led Zeppelin), and pop and rap stars like Kanye West and the Weeknd (who would enact similar plans in their wake) is that they were able to accomplish ambitious abandon without being subsumed by branding, and without leveraging much personal peace for cultural cachet. The French duo was in a long conversation with the Zeitgeist, interested in nothing less than shifting culture - a lofty aim for any band but one that you could argue this pair of chrome-domed dreamers made good on more than once since 1993, gauging the reverberations that followed the more audacious career moves Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo made in times they were interested in being seen or known. They workshopped product that catered to an unfulfilled need, then made calculated adjustments along the way, trying new things and learning from the mistakes that came from fiddling with the formula. In the almost three decades between early singles like “The New Wave” and Monday’s abrupt apparent breakup announcement, Daft Punk moved as much like engineers or software developers as musicians in the quest to locate dance music’s perfect sound. As visionary as they were, in many ways Thomas and Guy-Man arrived at the right place and the right time.