Daft Punk

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File:Daft Punk.jpg
Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo

Daft Punk is the main project of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (born February 8, 1974) and Thomas Bangalter (born January 3, 1975), two dance music artists from Paris. Its name was inspired by a review in the British music magazine Melody Maker, which described their first collaboration, a Beach Boys inspired guitar group named Darling that recorded on Stereolab's Duophonic imprint in 1992, as "a bunch of daft punk." Daft Punk's debut single "The New Wave" (Soma, 1993) was followed by their first commercially successful single "Da Funk" (1995). The album Homework (Virgin, 1997) was regarded as an innovative synthesis of techno, house, acid house and electro, and widely acknowledged as one of the most influential dance music albums of the nineties. In addition to "Da Funk", "Around The World" was the most successful single from Homework.

2001's Discovery, with its more commercial, synth-pop-oriented style, disappointed some fans of Homework. Nevertheless, it sold very well, and the single "One More Time" was a major club hit, which caused much of Daft Punk's newer fan base to know them mainly from Discovery. Some have interpreted the title "Discovery" as meaning "very Disco", as much of the album hearkens to the disco era; "Homework" can also be a reference to the respective album's focus, house music (Home ≈ House).

However, based on this interview with Daft Punk, the name for their second album was Discovery because Daft Punk used a lot of samples on the album that were from music they "discovered" when they were listening to music as they were growing up. (This can account for a good portion of Discovery to having a late '70s to early '80s feel to it.)

Daft Punk are notable for their use of visuals in music. The duo "became" robots for all of their publicity shots and interviews because, as they stated, "...we are Daft Punk and we don't need to show our faces to get on a magazine cover or sell shitloads of records". The music videos for their singles from Homework featured memorable characters and were directed by cult video producers, including Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. The album Discovery subsequently became the soundtrack to the anime film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, which they co-produced with Leiji Matsumoto. Many US fans were introduced to Daft Punk through a special presentation of their videos on Toonami which aired on Cartoon Network on August 31st, 2001. Very few photos of the faces of the duo exist as they have tended to use helmets or masks to cover their identity in any publicity shots.

Thomas Bangalter had a major club hit with "Music Sounds Better With You" in 1998, collaborating with Alan Braxe and Benjamin Diamond under the name Stardust on his own Roulé-label. In 2002 he produced the motion picture soundtrack for Gaspar Noé's Irréversible. Bangalter teamed up to create Together with DJ Falcon, who subsequently released the club smash "So Much Love To Give".

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo operates his own music label, Crydamoure.

Four years after the release of Discovery, Daft Punk released their follow up album, Human After All. One of the songs on the album, Technologic, was used by Apple Computer for its iPod commercial campaign.

Discography

Albums

Singles

From Homework:

  • "Da Funk"/"Musique" (1996) #7 UK, #31 Australia, #1 Hot Dance Music/Club Play
  • "Around The World" (1997) #61 US, #5 UK, #11 Australia, #1 Hot Dance Music/Club Play
  • "Burnin'" (1997) #30 UK
  • "Revolution 909" (1997) #47 UK, #2 Hot Dance Music/Club Play

From Discovery:

From Human After All:

VHS/DVD

See also

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