2013: Year of the Comeback

Posted February 9, 2013 by J Matthew Cobb in Features

Daft Punk Is Coming to Your House

While promoting their upcoming disc, Random Access Memories (RAM), Daft Punk dropped a startling revelation that might alarm the relaxed superstar DJ of the now. They declared that Electronic dance music (often declared “EDM” for short) is “in its comfort zone.” “It’s not moving one inch,” Thomas Bangalter complained. “That’s not what artists are supposed to do.”

They are generally called robots, but they are very much human. And their human feelings were getting the best of them while working on the forthcoming album. While coming up with ideas for it in 2008, the French duo, made up of Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, felt heavy concern about the project. “There was a sense of searching for a record we hadn’t done,” Bangalter said. The breakthrough came when they started experimenting with live musicians and “[recreating] what we used to do with machines and samplers, but with people”.

Although they continued to yield their synthesizers and voice-box vocoders, the boy-bots are putting their sampling regimen aside to try creating new, refreshing tunes. Many of those tunes are being developed with those who transformed the landscape of dance music. Daft Punk have solicited the help of legendary producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers (Chic), disco innovator Giorgio Moroder (Donna Summer) and hip-hop producer Pharrell Williams for RAM, while the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas and Panda Bear are also in on the mix. Besides the big-names attached to the disc, Daft Punk have revealed that much of the album is being played by “top-notch session players.”

What is old is now new again. But with Daft Punk involved, the new feels so damn good. A crafty SNL ad played a snippet of “Get Lucky,” a new single featuring Nile’s infectious guitar strokes and Daft Punk’s computer love. The feature was also screened before a crowd of thousands at this year’s Coachella, where the two sat backstage without their robot cloaks on. A few months back, rumors started to spread across the internet that Daft Punk would perform as headliners at the Indio music festival. And they did, except it was on a jumbo-tron and lasting for only sixty seconds. They just have to wait until the album drops on May 12.

Although the pair orchestrated the motion picture soundtrack to Tron: Legacy in 2012, the group’s last solo record was 2005’s Human After All.