Daft Punk

Darlin' and a daft review

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo met in 1987 at the Lycée Carnot in Paris. In 1992 they formed a guitar band, Darlin', with Laurent Brancowitz, taking the name from a Beach Boys song. It lasted around six months, two gigs and four songs, and Brancowitz later formed Phoenix. Melody Maker's Dave Jennings reviewed the band badly, calling the music "a daft, punky thrash". The two friends found it funny and took the phrase as their new name. With electronic instruments bought with money Bangalter received for his 18th birthday, they became Daft Punk.

In September 1993, at a rave at Euro Disney, they handed a demo tape to Stuart Macmillan of Slam, a co-founder of the Scottish label Soma Quality Recordings. It became their first single, The New Wave, in 1994, and its final mix, Alive, reached their debut album.

Homework

Da Funk appeared on Soma in 1995 in a run of 2,000 copies that a Muzik feature called virtually ignored, until the Chemical Brothers began playing it in their sets. A bidding war followed, and Daft Punk signed to Virgin Records in September 1996 with Pedro Winter as their manager. Bangalter said they wanted to keep creative control, and they licensed their tracks to Virgin through their own company, Daft Trax.

Homework came out on 20 January 1997. They had recorded it at home in Paris, cheaply and quickly, over about five months, with no plan for an album until they had enough tracks. It reached number 3 in France and number 8 in the UK, and Virgin said it had sold more than two million copies by February 2001. Around the World was the biggest single. Rolling Stone later called the record "pure synapse-tweaking brilliance", and Pitchfork's Larry Fitzmaurice wrote in 2018 that the duo's whole career began with it.

Robots and records

Discovery followed on 12 March 2001. Recorded at Bangalter's home in Paris between 1998 and 2000, it swapped Homework's rawness for disco, R&B and song structures, and Daft Punk adopted their silver and gold robot helmets before its release. One More Time was the lead single and reached number one in France. Digital Love and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger followed, and the album became the soundtrack to the anime film Interstella 5555, made with Leiji Matsumoto.

Human After All arrived in March 2005 after six weeks of work. It drew mixed reviews, and the Alive 2006/2007 tour, built around a lit pyramid, led many to reassess it. The Guardian's Alexis Petridis wrote that more than one observer pointed to their Coachella show in 2006 as the spark for America's EDM boom. Alive 2007 won a Grammy in 2009.

Random Access Memories and the end

After scoring Tron: Legacy in 2010, Daft Punk moved to Columbia and made Random Access Memories, released on 17 May 2013. They paid for the sessions themselves, recorded in California, New York and Paris, and replaced samples with session players. The lead single Get Lucky, with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, reached number two on the US Hot 100 and number one in the UK. The album won Album of the Year at the 2014 Grammys, and Get Lucky won Record of the Year.

In 2016 they appeared on the Weeknd's Starboy, their only US number one. On 22 February 2021 a video titled Epilogue, with a card reading 1993-2021, indicated that the duo had split. Their publicist confirmed it and gave no reason. A 25th-anniversary edition of Homework followed in February 2022, and a 10th-anniversary edition of Random Access Memories in May 2023.

The Guardian's Petridis wrote in 2021 that it was hard to think of an act with a greater impact on the way 21st-century pop sounds. He traced the filtered, sidechain-compressed house of Homework into mainstream pop, and noted that Madonna hired Mirwais for a Daft Punk-like sheen on her 2000 album Music.