Daft Punk

The following contains excepts from Daft Punk (a trip inside the pyramid) (Dina Santorelli).

Daft Punk is one of the most influential groups in the pioneering use of electronic music. Their ‘cyclical’ patterns are reminiscent of the ‘minimalism’ of Steve Reich and Phillips Glass (classical composers of the 1970s and 80s). EDM has been greatly influenced by Daft Punk, and a vast majority of what is heard today on pop media is an outgrowth of EDM. Another area in which Daft Punk pioneered is their live shows. We have grown to expect from secular concerts (and now in many worship services) what they began, with their integration of lights and video synchronization with their music. The use of computer technology has always put them on the forefront and their ‘image’ as two performing robots on stage, faces covered with metallic helmets, has captured the imagination of people around the world at a time when technology is burgeoning.

“Daft Punk is known to legions of music fans around the globe as the legendary and enigmatic French electronic dance music (EDM) duo consisting of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Affectionately dubbed ‘the robots’ for their ever-present metallic helmets and gloves, Daft Punk has been on a groundbreaking musical voyage since the 1990s, meshing their love for EDM with their younger roots in pop, indie rock, and hip-hop. In the time since then, they have essentially revolutionized house music.

“Although Daft Punk formed in the early 90s, their journey began the decade before in a small Paris bedroom where two adolescent boys, both fans of classic films and with similar and wide-ranging musical tastes…formed a friendship. Together, they went on to make music that was personal and innovative, and to create a catalogue that showcased their inclusive style, their knack for experimentation, and their curiosity about technology. Over the course of twenty years, Daft Punk’s body of work has blended music and mystique, and includes studio albums, live albums, compilation/remix albums, a soundtrack, music videos, films, collectives, collaborations, commercials, revolutionary concert tours, and more. It’s difficult to name other recording artists who have had their finger on the pulse of so many sounds and trends.” We encourage the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to be aware of various musical styles in various mediums.

“Daft Punk managed to not only achieve pop culture icon status, but also music industry respect. Anyone who’s attended an electronic music show in recent years will find traces of the dynamic duo both in the program and the presentation, as many of today’s artists feature Daft Punk’s tracks, or samples of tracks, prominently on set lists and tap into the duo’s groundbreaking live show format.

“Born in Paris, France, on January 3, 1975, Thomas Bangalter began playing the piano at the age of six…Thomas’ father, Daniel Vangarde (born Daniel Bangalter), is a French songwriter who penned and produced the 1970s hit song ‘D.I.S.C.O.’ by the French band Ottawan and ‘Cuba’ by the Gibson Brothers, also based in France.

“Rumored to be of aristocratic stock, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo was born on February 8, 1974, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-su-Seine. He is of Portuguese descent- his great-grandfather was the writer Homem Cristo Filho- and his parents were in advertising. He got his first keyboard and a small guitar on Christmas when he was about six or seven years old, but it was when he was fourteen that he received his first ‘real’ instrument: an electric guitar.

“Newcomers to the Daft Punk sound are often surprised to learn that …early music influences were more rock and pop than dance…in their teen years both men gravitated toward music icons such as The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, and Led Zeppelin (years later, Daft Punk’s mind-blowing live performances would lead one reviewer to describe them as the ‘Led Zeppelin of dance music’).

“With roots in disco and funk (as well as experimental rock and classical music), EDM, in broad terms, is defined as any music that uses electronic instruments or technology to create a seamless flow of sound designed for entertainment…particularly in nightclub settings.

“The synthesizer, a real-time performing musical machine, was an important technological development for the genre because it produces the sounds of a wide variety of instruments, including drums, keyboards, guitars, and horns, and, thus, acted as a stand-in for actual session players. One of the most successful uses of a synthesizer in the early to mid 70s was on a series of collaborative albums by Stevie Wonder and electronic musicians Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff….designed a large system that was dubbed T.O.N.T.O. (an acronym for The Original New Timbral Orchestra) and which, incidentally, was featured as the ‘electronic room’ in the 1974 film Phantom of the Paradise.

“Italian Producer and composer Giorgio Moroder, a natural behind the console who liked to experiment with new machines and sounds in the early 70s…helped shape the development of electronic music by incorporating synthesizers, specifically the Moog…into his compositions. Moroder came across the machine while living in Munich, where classical composer Eberhard Schoener showed him how to use it.

“Around the same time, two German bands, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, were also experimenting with similar machinery. Kraftwerk’s third studio album Ralf und Florian (1973) relied more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines than its predecessors, moving Kraftwerk closer to its characteristic sound, and featuring the band’s first use of the vocoder, another of its- and, later, Daft Punk’s- musical signatures. Likewise, Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra (1974), the band’s fifth studio album, was the first to feature their classic sequencer-driven sound.

In 1975, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder created the disco hit “Love to Love You Baby,” which was an outgrowth of experimentation that Moroder was doing to create the new ‘disco’ sound.

Although disco began as an underground movement, the genre went mainstream in 1977.

“While disco was working its way through club culture in the 1970s, another underground urban movement that would come to be known as ‘hip-hop was taking shape in New York City. Hip-hop music was both a backlash and successor to disco.

“Jamaica native DJ Kool Herc (born Clive Campbell)…played hard funk records, isolating the instrumental portions that emphasized the drum beat, the heavily percussive sections known as the ‘break.’ Using the same two-turntable setup of DJs who were spinning records in discos, Herc used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued the other record back to the beginning, extending that small part of the record into a several-minute loop (essentially, this was an early form of looping). At the same time, the word ‘breaking’ was street slang for ‘getting excited’ DJing would help form the basis of hip-hop music. What’s more, Herc’s call-outs to his dancers (whom he called ‘break boys’ and ‘break girls,’ or, simply, b-boys and b-girls) would lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment that came to be known as rapping.

“Herc’s DJ style was soon taken up by Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambista, both of whom are considered pioneers of hip-hop. An electronics student, Flash (born Joseph Saddler) turned DJing into an art form, polishing Herc’s style by playing with the electronics of music- instead of using a turntable simply as a playback device, he turned it into a percussive instrument. He was the first DJ to physically lay his hands on a record in order to manipulate its play, marking up the body of the vinyl with grease pencil and crayon, and invented a host of DJing techniques, including Quick Mix theory, which includes double-back, back-door, back-spin, and phasing. Flash’s template grew to include cutting, which also spawned scratching (although hip-hop DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore is credited with inventing scratching).

“Kevin Donovan (who changed his name to Africa Bambista after winning a trip to Africa, where he was impressed with the Zulu) returned to the Bronx vowing to use hip-hop as a way to draw angry kids out of gangs through a group he hounded called the Universal Zulu nation…In 1982, Africa Bambista & Soulsonic Force released the seminal track ‘Planet Rock,’ a song that blended synthesizer and vocorder sounds with breakbeating. This track is credited with developing the electro style of music, building on the work of early synthpop pioneers Kraftwork and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

“‘Rapper’s Delight’ was…the first hip-hop song to make use of sampling, which involves taking a portion (or sample) of a sound recording- in this case Chic’s ‘Good Times’ – and reusing it in a different song or piece.

“In 1982, Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) became the technical standard for allowing a wide variety of electronic musical instruments and computers- which would become fixtures in multi-track recording studios- to communicate with one another. (The standards resulted from a collaboration between the leading electronic music instrument manufacturers, including Roland and, later, Yamaha, both of which would become innovators in digital technology.) With the development of digital audio, creating and manipulating electronic sounds became simpler, and synthesizers came to dominate the world of pop music in the early 80s. By the end of the decade, dance music made using only electronic instruments became very popular, with the genre splintering into many different subgenres and geographically influenced scenes that continue to evolve to this day, including the following:

Acid House

“Originally referring specifically to the mid-80s Chicago house records that used the Roland TB-303 Bass Line synthesizer, acid house is remarkable for its squelching bass sound. The Chicago-based group Phuture’s first album Acid Tracks (1987) considered the beginning of the ‘acid’ moniker for the sound, which spread throughout the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

Brostep

“An offshoot of the original dubstep sound, brostep sounds aggressive and harsh, resembling the electric guitar in heavy metal, and replacing dubstep’s traditional sub-bass with robotic-sounding and fluctuating midrange frequencies.

Drum & Bass

“With an emphasis on drum and bass line, this genre offers fast breakbeats (160 to 180 BPMs). Like dubstep, it began as an offshoot of the hardcore early-90s UK rave scene, and is characterized by its edgy percussion, speed, and heavy bass lines. (The jungle genre of EDM falls into this category, as well.)

Dub

“Synonymous with its name, dub music, which grew out of reggae music in the 60s, plays with versions of existing songs (similar to a remix). The genre often drops lead vocals and instruments, emphasizing the stripped-down drum and bass parts, and employing sound work, such as echoes.

Dubstep

“This subgenre started as an underground reaction to the commercialization of UK garage music in the late 90s, which had lost its darker instrumental sound. Producers such as El-B, Horsepower Productions, and Oris Jay created experimental remixes, or dubs, of two-step garage releases, spawning a new subgenre that was bass heavy. Notably, producers such as Skrillex, who have taken dubstep mainstream, feature more of a wobble bass (an extended, musically manipulated bass note) and turbocharged sound.

Electro

“With influences ranging from Kraftwerk (considered the forefathers of pure electro), Yellow Magic Orchestra, Gary Numan, Afrika Bambaataa, and Herbie Hancock, among others, electro (or electro-funk) blends lots of drum machines, sampling, video-game and robotic sounds, and, in later years, full-bodied synths. Most electro instrumental or utilizes vocals processed through a vocoder.

Freestyle

“With origins in the United States in the mid 80s, freestyle (aka ‘breakdancing’ music) is a form of hip-hop dance that, like electro, originated from the electro-funk of Africa Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s 1982 seminal track ‘Planet Rock,’ as well as other radio-friendly songs, such as Shannon’s ‘Let the Music Play.’ The style is characterized by Latin percussion and heavy syncopation, as well as themes of romance, love, and having a good time.

Garage

“Named in reference to the New York City club the Paradise Garage, this subgenre of house music emphasizes quick vocal samples. Although American producer Todd Edwards is considered the originator of the sound, once it was brought to the UK and played at a slightly faster tempo, the genre exploded.

House

“American-born and one of the most popular forms of EDM, house music grew in Chicago in the early-80s aftermath of disco, it is influenced by disco’s percussive, repetitive four-on-the floor beat. New York DJ Frankie Knuckles- considered the godfather of house music- started enhancing disco tracks with drum machine bears and tape edits at Chicago’s Warehouse Nightclub, where he was invited to play in the early 80s, and house music was born. In 1983, Jesse Saunders released On and On, generally regarded as the first Chicago house record.

Moombahton

“One recent subgenre of EDM, Moombahton, emerged in 2009 and was created by Dave Nada, a Washington, D.C.- based DJ. As the story goes, Nada was DJing a party when he took a track he like, Afrojack’s remix of ‘Moombah,’ and slowed it down from 128 BPM to around 108 BPM, which created the basis for the genre.

Rave

“Rave found its origins in England’s acid house movement, when authorities were clamping down on London clubs, prompting the parties- or raves, as they became known- to move out tot eh countryside. As the parties grew bigger and as Europeans began to produce their own house records, ‘rave’ came to symbolize the music as well as the venues.

Techno

“Inspired by Kraftwerk and New York electro, techno stems from a small network of kids in Detroit- in particular, Juan Atkins, who is credited as the originator of techno music. Atkins and partner Rick Davis formed Cybotron, a group inspired by Midwestern funk, notably George Clinton, as well as Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and others, fusing austere European techno-pop with street-level funk. In 1985, Atkins formed Metroplex Records and released ‘No UFOs,’ which created a blueprint for techno. Goldie’s 1992 track, ‘Terminato,.’ pioneered the technique of time-stretching, the process of changing the speed or duration of an audio signal without affecting its pitch, for hardcore techno.

Trance

“Originating in Germany in the 90s, trance is a variant of techno and is known for its anthems- huge tracks with relentlessly hypnotic riffs that build up and down.

70s

Disco, Europe
Dub, Jamaica
Hip-hop, U.S. (New York)

80s

Acid House, U.S. (Chicago)
Electro, U.S. (New York)
Freestyle, U.S.
Garage, UK
House, U.S. (Chicago)
Techno, U.S. (Detroit)

90s

Dubstep, UK
Drum & Bass, UK
Rave
Trance, Germany

00s

Moombahton, U.S.

10s

Brostep, U.S.

“As the UK rave scene filtered across the English Channel in the late 80s and early 90s, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo developed more of an interest in electronic dance music. They were drawn to bands such as Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, pioneering groups of the Manchester, England, music scene (known as ‘Madchester’), which mixed alternative rock, psychedelic rock, and dance music.

“In particular, two releases got Bangalter and de Homem-Christo’s attention: Primal Screem’s ground-breaking album Screamadelica (1991), which mixed rock and roll classicism with the looser elements of dance, and ‘Soon’, the closing track to My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 album Loveless, which featured a dance-oriented beat.

They began experimenting with recording equipment “making house music based on big hip-hop beats…Soon, ‘Darlin’, the rock-oriented band they had formed with Laurent Brancowitz, disbanded, and Brancowitz went on to join his brother Christian Mazzalai’s alternative rock group, which come to be known as Phoenix.

“In 1993, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were at a rave party at EuroDisney, where they met the managers of the Scottish EDM label, Soma Records…Bangalter presented a demo of his and de Homem-Christo’s work to Macmillan under the Daft Punk moniker, and it 1994, Daft punk released its first single, ‘The New Wave’.

“‘Da Funk,’ an instrumental disco track by Daft Punk, became the duo’s first commercially successful song.

“Homework, Daft Punk’s first studio album, released in January 1997, was recorded in Thomas Bangalter’s bedroom…In addition to creating innovative music…(Daft Punk) set out to show that music can be a do-it-yourself proposition, made in the same way that two young kids might work together on a school assignment.

“Homework, featuring sixteen tracks, became so popular that it was distributed in thirty-five countries, placed on the Billboard 200 and the UK Top 10 album charts, and brought worldwide attention to French house music, helping to make Daft Punk one of the biggest-selling acts to come out of France.

“D.A.F.T.: A Story About Dogs, Androids, Firemen and Tomatoes, released in 1999, is a video collection for Daft Punk’s debut album, Homework, and features music videos for six tracks…The DVD edition features a multiple camera angle video, which allows viewers to select camera shots to create their own unique edit.)

“In 1997, Daft Punk embarked upon a tour in support of their debut studio album Homework…‘Alive 1997.’

Daft Punk “changed up their successful formula with their second album (released in March 2001 by Virgin Records), and embraced a broader range of pop, funk, and progressive rock, eschewing dance music’s conventional benchmarks in an effort to reinvent themselves. This was just the first of many reinventions throughout their career thus far.” We encourage experimentation with various musical styles in our music school in Odessa, Texas.

“The heavy emphasis on filtered disco sample, phase-shifted textures, and 909 drums beats mostly based around loops and grooves that had become hallmarks of modern house (a sound Daft Punk helped to define) took a backseat to traditionally styled songs with distinctive rock overtones and body-popping electro beats reminiscent of the late 70s and early 80s. On Discovery, there are guitars that sound like synthesizers and synthesizers that sound like guitars.

“Discovery was ultimately a multimillion-selling album and, in 2012, Rolling Stone named it the eighth greatest EDM album of all time.

“Since their early days of experimenting with drum machines and beat boxes in their bedrooms, they wanted to take a sweeping approach to their art that would incorporate things like their love of cinema, character, and having fun into everything from their album covers to their personas. Rather than marketing ploys, Bangalter has called these satellite endeavors part of the ‘general universe’ in which Daft Punk creates.” We encourage the amalgamation of styles and synthesis techniques to the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas.

“Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem is a sixty-eight-minute feature-length film about the intergalactic abduction of an extraterrestrial pop band. It has no dialogue…utilizes all fourteen tracks from the second studio album Discovery, which, when played one after the other in order, sync perfectly with each episode of the film.

“In March 2005, Daft Punk released its highly anticipated third studio album, Human After All, a minimalist, less pop-oriented record with hard-edged, low-res electronic dance numbers that aimed to reinvent the duo once again…Rather than experimenting musically- as they’d done to create the relentless pulse of Homework and the lush, expansive Discover- they decided to produce Human after All within a limited time frame and with a limited kit. Whereas Daft Punk’s other studio albums were years in the making, Human After All was created in about six weeks…primarily using two drum machines, two guitars, one vocoder, and one eight-track machine.” We believe it is important for the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to understand the value of production, as well as the value of authenticity in minimalist expressions, as well.

In the process of making a video for Human After All, they decided to make a movie: Electroma.

“Electroma is an experimental film that was shot on 35mm Kodak stock under the cinematography direction of Bangalter…The film follows the quest of two robots, credited as Hero Robot #1 and Hero Robot #2, who represent the Daft Punk band members.

“For a genre with its roots in club culture, EDM traditionally has been more about the sound than the spectacle. DJs, the faceless ringleaders of dark, smoky hotspots, were wizards atop podiums, mixing throbbing bass lines to dancing feet and pumping fists. As EDM ventured from the dance floor to the stage, however, the transition seemed unsuited to a forum accustomed to watchers or, perhaps, wallflowers paying a ticket price rather than a cover charge.

“Therefore, the early days of EDM as concert attractions were off to an unsteady start with an audio/visual setup consisting of little more than a few speakers and a film projector. Although the shows changed and matured with the genre, many point to Daft Punk’s first appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indo, California, in 2006- where the duo unveiled their now-legendary pyramid- as a game-changer. Manning a 24-foot-tall aluminum pyramid of custom-built supercomputers covered with screens, Daft Punk created what many believe to be the best electric show ever assembled, a veritable LED-infused honeycomb pulsing with music and purpose.

“The idea for the pyramid stage setup came from Daft Punk’s 2005 video for ‘Technologic,’ which featured a little robot who chants the song’s lyrics- which flash on a television monitor- while sitting in a little red pyramid on a pyramid-themed stage where Bangalter and de Homen-Christo are playing bass guitars. The two thought it would be funny to be perched in a larger pyramid in a ‘crazy, tricked out show’ while trying to bring a completely new and global experience to the audience.

“It was with that mindset that Daft Punk began the Coachella show fittingly with the distinctive five-note sequence from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind- in other words, the duo seemed to say, ‘Get ready to see something out of this world.’ What followed was just that- an hour-plus grand sound and light experience with a feast of special effects and a carefully crafted set lest that nearly read like a book.

“The Coachella gig- a rare live appearance in the united States- kicked off a string of festival performances that would, the following year become a highly acclaimed and anticipated concert tour around the world advertised as ‘Alive 2007’…taking Daft Punk to Europe, South America, Asia, Mexico, and Australia as well as the United States and catapulting the French dance duo to ta new tier of fame.

“In 2007, Daft Punk released a live album, Alive 2007…Both the album’s track-list and the tour’s set-list mixed Daft Punk’s popular back catalog with renewed fervor and a heavy emphasis on tracks from the third studio album Human After All (although Human After All garnered mixed reviews when first released, the live versions of the songs were well-received). Alive 2007, which came ten years after Daft Punk’s fist live album, Alive 1997, won the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2009. Additionally, the live version of ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,’ which was released as a single, won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording that year.

Daft Punk took on the project of film-scoring for TRON: Legacy (the sequel to the 1982 Disney film, Tron). “When the duo signed on for the 2010 sequel TRON: Legacy, it represented their first film score and offered a teste of what it was like to work with live musicians, an experience they would explore more emphatically with their next studio album, Random Access Memories.

“In 2008, Disney arranged to have Daft Punk meet with several successful soundtrack composers about a potential collaboration, including Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell and Christophe Beck. ‘They were very generous and very open, sharing a lot of technical advice,’ Bangalter has said. However, in the end, Daft Punk scrapped any collaboration plans. ‘It was considered a huge risk for Disney,’ Kosinski said. ‘A director who had never done a feature before and composers who hadn’t scored a movie before.’

“Although the filmmakers were expecting the duo to come up with a purely electronic score, Daft Punk wanted the film to be timeless- ‘a cello was there 400 years ago and will still be here in 400 years,’ Bangalter has said, ‘but synthesizers that were invented twenty years ago will probably be gone in the next twenty.’ In their electronic music, Daft Punk has always tried to combine existing genres, so they like the idea of merging a dark, 70s-style electronic score with a classic Hollywood sound for the TRON: Legacy musical score.

“In July 2010, Daft punk assembled a symphony of eighty-five world-class musicians in London and recorded the orchestra at AIR Lyndhurst Studios, Britain’s premier scoring facility. They worked with music arranger and orchestrator Joseph Trapanese, who translated the duo’s ideas into symphonic arrangements- ‘my role was as the interface between the robots and the orchestra,’ Trapanese has joked. The result was a dark and ominous score that would rely as much on classical orchestrations as on electronics, merging poignant strings and horns with pulsing bass and synth. ‘We knew for the start that there was no way we were going to do this film score with two synthesizers and a drum machine,’ Bangalter has said.” We believe that it is important for the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to understand how to utilize the electronics of our day as understanding time-tested arranging and scoring techniques used in Classical music.

“Daft Punk’s artistic vision uses music to develop various vectors of artistic expression, satellites that piece together into a comprehensive whole. From…cutting-edge and elaborate set design to their costuming, choreographed live shows, and highly selective media appearances, there is an air of theatricality and performance to all that they do that transcends the music business as an ever-evolving vision of art.

“Part of that vision includes outright commercialization, an area that some artists tend to- or, at least, pretend to- shy away from. For a couple of guys who like to keep their distance from the press, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo make a point of showing up the mass media from time to time, whether in corporate commercials or video games, in order to maintain that interactive engagement with their audience…Daft Punk has deftly straddled the realms of art and pop culture- that delicate balance between art as a craft and also as an industry- since the beginning of their career, exploring the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity, and advertisement. In doing so, they have become pop culture icons.” We encourage the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to find the balance of communicating within the existing culture, as well as artistry that transcends that culture.

Among Daft Punk’s collaborators are: Pharrell Williams, Paul Williams, Nile Rodgers, Giorio Moroder, Panda Bear, Julian Casablancas, Todd Edwards, Chilly Gonzales, DJ Falcon, John ‘JR’ Robinson and Omar Hakim.

Daft Punk’s influence extends to a new generation of DJs, artists and producers, including Kanye West, the Black-Eyed Peas, and Brianna.

“Anyone with a bit of talent and a lot of passion can use a synthesizer to created great music.” (Giorgio Moroder, composer)

Daft Punk’s influence in pop-culture is undeniable. What will be interesting to see is how history will treat them. Their contribution may ultimately be seen more for their marketing integration than of actual musical creativity. They quite evidently have left their ‘mark’ but history will eventually show how deep that influence actually was.