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Publication: Mixmag, 2000

Daft Punk One More Time

Fashion clearly operates by different rules in the Daft dimension. At Mixmag's cover shoot in a studio under the shadow of the Eiffel tower, the gold robot today wears a flamboyant ruffle-neck shirt, red leather double-breasted overcoat and scarlet Miu Miu slip-ons. Outdoing this stance against good taste, the taller, slimmer silver counterpart sports a flared Oxfam-reject suit which of a kind even Jarvis Cocker would think twice about wearing. Setting these costumes off are LED-illuminated Robocop helmets and backpacks, which sequentially twinkle and flash hypnotically. The robots don't say anything; they us stand, looking like the past, the present and Terminator II all at the same time. Next to this, Elton John's most extravagant costume dramas look like just another day in John Major's sock drawer.

Bienvenue, wilkommen, and welcome to the 2001 leg of Daft Punk's global disco pantomime which, like last time it came to town, is about to save house music, teach the world a fresh dance move, revitalise music's flagging economy of ideas, and do more for French foreign policy than free Louis Vuitton luggage for every world citizen could ever achieve. The way they're going to do it is called "Discovery", an album which is to their 1996 debut "Homework" what the Arc de Triomphe is to your dad's shed. As they've already pointed out, we're going to have a celebration. Dress code for the event is Daft. In fact, the world is about to go so Daft, it's just silly.

SEVERAL hours earlier, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo - whom everyone calls Guy-Man - are ignoring the breakfast laid out an office near La Bastille, Paris. No prizes for guessing that Modjo's "Lady" wasn't quite Thomas Bangalter's favourite record of 2000 (it was actually 'Untitled' by Daft Punk’s Parisian rocker chums Phoenix).

"But I like the acoustic version," Thomas says.

"But I prefer Stardust," mumbles Guy-Man.

"But I don't think Modjo looks too much like Stardust?" counters Thomas

"Yes it does," corrects Guy-Man, faintly indignant.

"It's a very nice production," concludes Thomas. "I think it's... entertaining. Music isn't only based on innovation. But it's not a track we'd be interested in doing." 

Are you bothered that people copy you? "It's very rewarding [grins broadly]. And anyway, isn't copying what we did on the new album  [grins even more broadly]."

Together, Thomas and Guy-Man present perfectly-formed hemispherical personalities, the whole of which you'll only ever experience through their music. Alone, Thomas is so electrified and spindly that he appears to have no bottom, but a very complicated and immediate answer to everything to make up for it. Meanwhile, the roomier Guy-Man (sequined New York hoodie, dazzling Nikes, lugubrious countenance) is chatty as a stone, his deep silences presumably harbouring the mystical knowledge of house music. When Thomas speaks, he chatters along in US-inflected English (he lived there as a child); when Guy-Man speaks, it's an event. What have you been up to, Thomas and Guy-Man?

"Not doing that much," Thomas lies. "We've been working since we finished touring with 'Homework'. If we'd been in the studio constantly, three years would have been very long time. But you can think about a track without being be in the studio.. It was about feeling our own pressure, not external pressure."

When Daft Punk explains themselves, as far as the notoriously circumspect pair ever "explain" anything, it's in this cautious way. To them, it's "not doing that much"; to anybody else's, it's changing the world with a beatbox. At 26, dance music's least conventional, most visionary creatives, they've done more in five years than most dance outfits manage in 10. And done it wearing weird masks, too.

Since 1996, clubland has throbbed to the dense chug of Daft Punk trackery, largely unaware that there is revolution between the grooves. When Daft Punk released "Homework", their cerebral deconstruction of house, dance music collectively stood back and gasped. Not so much making their music by the rules as making the rules by their music, 'Homework' was house's last evolutionary leap. When the masks were pulled away and its auteurs revealed as posh French twenty-year-olds with an ear for a tune that verged on the virtuoso, men who'd spent lifetimes toiling in studios broke down and wept.

The filter disco sound that Daft Punk invented seduced clubland, but "Da Funk", "Around The World", "Revolution 909" and "Burnin'" didn't make number one. However, Stardust's "Music Sounds Better Than You" - created almost inadvertently over a few days by Thomas and some friends - did, and today, vocoders and licky disco guitars feature even on Mahir's "I Kiss You" Chrimbo effort. As Madonna's "Music" and Phatts & Small's so-Stardust-it-hurts "Turnaround" prove, these days the world loves Daft Punk so much it even makes number one records on their behalf.

When "Daft Punk One More Time" arrived late in 2000, it was, according to your point of view, either: A) the ultimate expression of sizzling filter disco cross-bred with adrenal pop and sung by a Dalek (viz. "true pop" fans); B) a total sell-out - Daft Punk doing a gross commercial imitation of themselves (serious dance folk - "I thought One More Time sounded like Kool & The Gang when I first heard it," says Pete Tong). Or C), "like a sandwich. We'd never done a song that wasn't repetitive and the break is so long that it's not even the break. The song itself is the breakdown." (Thomas Bangalter). Wherever you stand, the chatter it stirred up underlined the kind of condundrum that comes free with every Daft Punk move. How do you plead?

"You stop putting out Daft Punk records for four years and then you have track called 'Daft Punk One More Time'..." Thomas mulls. "That was for us a very innocent and spontaneous thing to do. We like the message in itself: Daft Punk One More Time. like it's our return to making Daft Punk music. Maybe it means comeback or repetition or whatever you want. But having made that track it was obvious to release it first and put it first on the album."

Weird fact: DPOMT was written before Cher's cheeseville 1998 smash 'Believe', which took the same wobbly voice modulation effect to global ubiquity. The plastic diva also sampled the beats from 'Revolution 909', all of which which scotches the sell-out accusations pronto. It's tempting to think Daft Punk had this all thought through. Apparently not...

"People analyse and theorize," says Thomas, with a shrug. "We're not doing that. It's just... a track."

The hardcore tribes of Daft will point out that Daft Punk track is never just a track, however. When the Daft-Punk-by-proxy "Together" by Thomas and DJ Falcon on Bangalter's test-ground Roulé imprint hit clubland UK, crowds sung along to its bassline, people cried on dancefloors, grown men and women made fools of themselves under its auspices. Some even thought it should have been the new Daft Punk single. It was, in short an event like every other Daft Punk release. In the UK, "DPOMT" made Number Two in a unifying national dancefloor meltdown. Everywhere else in Europe, it went to Number One. Job done, whichever way you look at it.

 The good/bad news is that 'Discovery" contains no further "sandwiches", only 12 tracks of paradigm-shifting, electrifying Daft Punkness. The few who've heard its 12 tracks describe it with every superlative from "amazing " to "incredible", and recount experiencing their jaws crash the floor as each successive track opens. Furthermore, it's been termed "accessible", "Eighties-sounding", and "poppy". Far from heading Westlife-wards, Daft Punk's "new direction" swings like a magnet in a compass shop. What "Discovery" delivers is haute couture house music: an odyssey that begins with a primal 4/4 thump, ends with a primal 4/4 thump, and somewhere in between casually tosses in neo-classical arpeggios played on a 303, pyrotechnical metal riffage made to sound like techno, pumpin' FM power-rock stiched up with wonky beatboxes, rubberized p-funk slapped over angular electro all sews it up with more hooks than a square mile of velcro. It's got Big Ben on it. Making the improbable sound nothing short of brilliant, Queen, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, Van Halen and Beethoven are all present and incorrect. The house/Eighties perm-rock/baroque/electro crossover tsunami starts here, possibly.

"The album has house influences, and non-house influences," Thomas offers, by way of meagre explanation. "There are too many influences: from rock to heavy metal to classical to... anything."

"The first album was more a Chicago sound," Guy-Man postulates. "This one is having more influences from all the music we listen to but always having the beats and the effectiveness of the club sound."

Thomas: "And having tracks that go in the same direction, and also having a whole."

In short, "Discovery" is the unlikely made fact, house made with guitars, metal played on samplers. It is the New Rules, such an arresting synthesis of dancefloor functionalism, blatant pop savvy and virtuoso musicianship as to render notions of underground and commercial meaningless. According to Thomas Bangalter there's only one "true" house track on "Discovery" anyway, Romanthony's spiralling, ten-minute exit track ‘Too Long’.

What's more, over the incendiary solo of "Digital Love" - the album's apex after the chop-socky new single "Aerodynamic" - that's Thomas and Guy-Man you'll find singing. Sounding like a light-speed "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it's wholly possible to get jiggy with, it make most of what passes for house music sound mediaeval by comparison. Born to do it? And then some...

"We're not interested in doing the same thing twice," Thomas decides. "Things have changed since 'Homework', electronic music has exploded, and [with venom] it's accepted by society. The anger in 'Revolution 909' has no legitimate grounds today because Madonna makes records called 'Music'. Some people might be nostalgic, but there's no point doing it twice. We create our own rules, so everyone can create their rules, which means there are no rules. Anymore."

Bring forth the guillotine. It's revolution time. Again...

SOMEWHERE between "Homework" and "Discovery", as they glob trotted alongside The Mongoloids - kindred VIP dancesters Basement Jaxx, DJ Sneak, Roger Sanchez and Armand Van Helden - Thomas and Guy-Man completed their graduation from prodigies to near-genii. That's great news for clubbers seeking oblivion amid zippy French house grooves every Friday night; it's nothing short of a godsend for everyone else involved in le Daft Punk biz-nez.

 "They think very deeply about what they do," says Pete Tong points out. "Thomas is incredibly suspicious. He's the control freak. Daft punk have got power and scope and it creates excitement for the industry. The music is the most important thing, but its incredibly powerful to control all aspect of their career. They are firm about what they want, and very honourable. They've shown from the decisions they made - using Spike Jonze for videos, for example - that they know what they were doing. They control their own destiny."

 The It-Kids of dance music, Daft Punk don't necessarily think big, though they definitely think clever. Daft Punk's principle of creative control fostered by independence was inaugurated well before the world knew their music. "Business is way of controlling want you want to do," says Thomas. "The main factor in what we want is independence, to be self-financing and self-producing. What we are before making music is an independent production company. The act in itself of dealing with a major label, doing things the way you want it's a way to change things, and we have fun changing thing from inside the system."

As a 21-year-old, Thomas set up Daft Trax, a production company for his and Guy-Man's music, the upshot of which being that Daft Punk records are licensed to Virgin, whose marketing and distribution power the duo exploit while retaining control and copyright. Poring over distribution deals and sales forecasts might be less fun as gathering plaudits on the international VIP house circuit, Thomas and Guy-Manuel's capacity to keep weave magic into their tunes as well as their spreadsheets is key to their success. While your gagging over the notion of young businessmen of the year with lucrative sideline in chartbusting jack trax, consider finally that Thomas and Guy-Man had the whole grand projet sketched out from the get-go.

"Selling, pressing, touring... Daft Punk were the first here to do all that," confirms Thierry head of Virgin France's international department. "In Paris, everyone making music calls them. They all share information with each other, but what Daft Punk do is  the rules."

For the past six years, principal among the rules has been Thomas and Guy-Man's manipulation of Daft Punk's public perception. Orla Lee is head of marketing for Virgin in the UK, and she's in charge of managing the way in which the duo appear to the public. On a regular basis, she's pleasantly staggered by working with Thomas and Guy-Man.

"We never know what they're going to do," Orla says, fiddling with the UK's sole copy of 'Discovery' at her London office. "Daft Punk do what they want: remixes, label copy, advertising... They're incredibly clued-up about what's going on in different territories. From a marketing point of view," she adds, good-naturedely, "it can be frustrating."

Daft Punk's exercise in branding borders on the revolutionary. As dance music goes global, only the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim can claim anywhere near as coherent an brand image as Daft Punk.

Beyond The KLF, Kraftwerk and The Orb, no other pop acts have as successfully hoodwinking the world into believing in themselves as things rather than as humans.  Daft Punk, who've achieved a total separation between Daft Punk (the people) and Daft Punk (the thing). 

Access to the latter is choreographed through high-art videos and DVDs, sloganeering ("we like having a message," says Thomas "What don't want are tracks with no meaning"), colour-coding (it's the same colour spectrum on "DPOMT"'s sleeve lettering as on the new robot helmets and on the Japan-only promotional crayon etc) and concept-led magazines shoots personally approved by the DP elders. More than just providing wicked visuals, public attention is focused away from Thomas and Guy-Man and onto Daft Punk (the thing) by their masks, and it would take a will of iron not to be hypnotised by their current set. These mesmerising retro-futuristic creations designed to reference oldschool games consoles, they were produced at astronomical cost by special effects people in LA, and are capable of displaying programmable messages in the visors' built-in LED banks. Handily, it means Daft Punk don't even have to explain their "message" anymore: they just print it one their faces. There's something it's positively New Labour about Daft Punk, even if it is considerably funkier.

As for access to the former... well, there isn't any. Thomas's girlfriend is an actress. Guy-Man only buys hip hop CDs. It's Thomas' birthday today (January 3). Guy-Man's brother's music is going well, thanks. And that's it.

Globally recognised as The Men is Masks, neither Thomas or Guy-man can remember he last time they were stopped in the street. Everybody in their neighbourhood know they make music; nobody knows they are chart stars Daft Punk, however.

Don't you fancy riding down Les Champs Elysées on white disco steeds as Paris cheers you on?

"Do we enjoy celebrity?" Thomas ponders. "We enjoy the celebrity of the concept, of Daft Punk as an entity."

"We're not making music for being celebrity or famous or being recognised of having girls around or everything," nods Guy-Man. "That's why we put our work in front."

Out of choice, Thomas and Guy-Man didn't DJ much in 2000. They couldn't find any decent records anyway. And for the time being, they're far less than enthralled by house music than they are by the ecstasy-fried daydreams of visionary Atlantan hip hoppers Outkast.

"They're cool," considers Guy-Man. "It's like something you've never heard; really inspiring and avant-garde, much more than house. Just music that's not trying to be in any style."

Last year, however, Thomas was struck by the revelation that music itself no longer holds a capacity for change, only the ways in which music reaches its audience have a capacity for change. In particular, Radiohead's rock with-a-conscience stance and trashing of music biz orthodoxies - no singles to promote an album, no corporate sponsorship at gigs - found resonance resonated chez Daft.

"Sometimes, not making something can be an act of innovation," says Thomas. "There will be a video for "One More Time", but we want to show that video is not just a promo tool n. By putting out the video after three months after the single emphasises that video can be a creation in itself, not just something to promote something else."

It's at the point where business and music meet that, these days, Daft Punk choose to turn convention on its head. Free of the money-making imperative - after "Homework", "Stardust" and everything else, they aren't short of a bob or several trillion - the zeal with which Daft Punk approach the unglamorous business of branding is explained thus:

"A lot of branding is just to sell; we are interested when it becomes more like pop art - when it's making art, not money," Thomas says. "We like it when branding is innovative and about changing the world, instead of making money."

Which may be news to anyone who thought Daft Punk were just about making bangin' tunes and paying the rent.

PARISIAN for "wicked, innit" is "ça défonce, hein?". Marching about the photo studio in a semi-complete robot costume and waving a credit card, half man half Power Ranger Thomas Bangalter has just said it for the seventeenth time today. He's all smiles and urgency. The volume rises. A knot of French blokes coagulate around the grinning cyborg, oohing and aahing.

For a moment Thomas look likely to disintegrate with excitement. Drugs? Mais non... the credit card in question is the first Daft Club membership card, one of which they plan to include in every copy of 'Discovery'. Having subverted the rules of pop, rewritten business theory and dismantled branding culture, Daft Punk's next trick for 2001 is to out-Napster Napster, the biggest music biz bugaboo since sampling made musical theft legitimate. While the world empties its bank account trying to set up meaningful online presence, Daft Club is a combination of supermarket loyalty card, members-only online experience and micro-Napster. Sign up with your unique card number, and bingo: a whole new world of downloadable Daftness awaits...

 "...for free," stipulates Thomas, firing up a Viao laptop for an impromptu run-through. "Audio and visual content, remixes, new track. The cool thing about Napster is that it gets music first. I think 'Discovery' will be on Napster before it's in shops. Now, everything will be first on Daft Club."

Basement Jaxx recently come out against Napster. Don't you want to get paid? In full?

"Sure, we need to sell records not to lose money sure, because we've spent most of our money on videos for 'Homework' and DVDs and stuff. With Daft Club we're paying: this is a gift," Thomas reasons.

"We agree that CDs are too expensive. But instead of attacking Napster, we dreamed of setting up a different model servicing something more appealing. There's is no reward in buying a CD when you can get the same music on Napster. The thing is to make the buying experience more personal and entertaining, emphasising membership. It's a community. What is music if it's not having things in common with people?"

We're here again, watching Daft Punk applying their talent for conceptual thinking to the ugly part the music-making process: marketing, the key link in the chain between producer and consumer. They're doing it for the kids; unless, that is, they're doing it to maximise profits in the long-term. Regardless: they're doing something no one else has done before.

 Alex Cortez strolls over and paws the Daft Club card. "They have so many ideas," he murmurs. "So many people we make vide for have no idea what they want, Alls the ever say is, 'No, I don't like it'."

Anyone who's seen the lysergic speedway-gone-pop-art video he and partner Martin Fougerol made for Cassius will recognise the pair as no creative slouches themselves. Responsible for designing the masks

And while we're meeting the troops, here's Pedro Winter, the towering 25-year-old "production manager" who is the Daft Team all-in-one vibes-broker, confidante and fixer (ie, the one with a solution to every problem today's global house hero faces); and doe-eyed Gildas, Guy-Man's ex-roomie and now chargé d'affaires at Roulé and Crydamoure. And finally, dreadlocked Cedric, who's hip-hop style jeans worn at arse-level seem certain to rendezvous with the floor any moment now.

The creative nexus of a community that includes producers Alan Braxe, Benjamin Diamond, DJ Falcon, Cassius and Phoenix, and directors Spike Jonze, Seb Janiak and Roman Coppola, they're what's called Daft Team, a support crew working even further behind the masks than Thomas and Guy-Man. They answer calls at Daft House offices in Montmarte, manage affairs for Daft Trax studios, contribute ideas to the Daft Life production company, generally keep the Daft machine oiled. Never mind the international VIP hook-ups such as the Mongoloid non-starter (on the subject of which, "nothing is happening," say Guy-Man, shrugging massively), the creative streams runs deepest right here amid the chummy esprit de corps of Daft Team, where bonkers sci-fi helmets, absurd video concepts and new laws of house physics are concocted between considerable periods of spliff smoking and messing about.

"It's not like a work job (sic)," mutters Gildas. "We are friends at the beginning - and we stay friends."

"Everything is done for fun," adds Pedro.

On final figure completes the outfit. He wrote "D.I.S.C.O." ages ago. He's Thomas's dad. He's Daniel Vangarde. Some call him a genius. If he is, it runs in the family. He's... extremely important to the Daft Punk gameplan in a take-it-from-us kind of way. The invisible disco dad is now officially "on board"

"He had the idea of protection," Pedro says, "of dealing by ourselves; he gave the base of what's happening to Daft Punk. Now, officially, he is working as an advisor. He did it for the first five years. He is a guide. But he has new vision, like us so we match perfectly."

Pedro observes the robots totter about across the studio, with Thomas and Guy-Man inside them somewhere. They look incredible, like Space Invaders made flesh. But the helmets are heavy. You can't see out them, and if Thomas isn't careful he'll... too late: a pool of cold coffee spreads washes across he floor.

"I'm sure they have something that nobody can understand They are really close, Pedro observes. "They acts like brothers. But, you know the real reason they wear the helmets? It's because they are shy."

 So here are the world champions of house, several revolutions down the line and still producing radical ideas like they were paper aeroplanes. On an evolutionary tack like that, one day Daft Punk will probably quit making records and turn to cybernetics for a challenge. When they do, they'll probably dress up as scruffy dance blokes for the cameras rather than appear in person. When you think about it, that's the daftest thing of all.

© Kevin Braddock 2000

(At least this is what they told me. I was, after all, talking to robots all afternoon: )

All content ©2004 Kevin Braddock

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