Why Daft Punk's 2013 comeback is so exciting
How the robotic duo set themselves apart from their dance contemporaries
- Rumoured tracks include 'Renoma Street': We all got very excited in the summer when it was revealed a new Daft Punk track 'Renoma Street' was due for release in July 2012. Then it didn't happen so we all went and listened to Homework for the millionth time. The track was named by French dance magazine Tsugi, who hopefully took their listing from some whisper of truth.
Yesterday we had the news that Daft Punk had jumped ship from EMI and joined Columbia Records (interesting) and that a new album might arrive as early as spring this year (the internet went mental).
While the internet regularly loses its mind (Harry Styles' relationships, Shaggy not being dead etc) news of a fourth Daft Punk record has incited a different sort of desperate thirst for confirmation.
Daft Punk have become beyond a dance institution. Their debut, Homework, is arguably one of the best first records ever made, and Discovery proved it wasn't just a fluke.
In fact, they were so good that when the slightly dubious Human After All came along in 2005 most of us chose to see it simply as a misfire, one of those things that happen, and really not part of the Daft Punk musical parthenon at all.
But it's more than Daft Punk's records that've got people going loopy for any news regarding them. Perhaps the title Human After All was a bit of a joke, because the duo have managed to make themselves something almost more than human - a robotic pair who have no normal, day-to-day lives, who just sit in some isolate space (probably something with lots of flashing lights) and make tracks that change dance music.
Everything seems to slot in with this picture, from the largely synthesised voices used to their continued evasiveness, mystery and the robotic imagery.
From the determined statement of intent that was 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' to the examination of our developing technological dependence of 'Technologic'; the almost euphoric 'Around The World' to the the similarly soaring 'One More Time'. This is not the work of mere mortals, or so it seems at least.
When looked at in comparison to their contemporaries - artists like The Chemical Brothers, or The Prodigy - there's one thing that Daft Punk are instantly head and shoulders above the rest with - image.
While Liam Howlett and Keith Flint might've started looking their age a little, Daft Punk's helmets look fresh out the box. There's nothng visuallly that gives a hint that maybe the duo are getting past their best. They don't look like dads or veterans tired with the industry. They look like spacemen.
But beyond that it's the percieved inaccessibility that comes with Daft Punk. You'd never think about Tweeting Daft Punk, or checking their Facebook page to find out what club they've 'checked in' to.
No, you have to wait, greedily salivating, until they decide to suddenly reveal something. Everything they do seems so completely on their own terms that there's a constant underlying worry that at any moment they might decide they've had enough and are packing it in and it'll all be over. When we hear about the prospect of a new record, it could be almost anything, and we're so incredibly thankful for the news that the Daft Punk machine rolls on.
Yes, they're musical innovators, but beyond that they've worked out how to play the music game in a way where they apparently can't lose. As something-other-than-humans they are in many ways impervious to what anyone has to say about them.
We hunger for news of what Daft Punk are doing because they're so sparing in giving it to us. Their music is so exciting because it seems genuinely detached from the two Frenchmen making it, it feels like it can go on and on unaffected by what might happen to the humans under the helmets. In an age where we know what some popstars had for breakfast, or why their girlfriends throwing a strop, a musical act who stands completely apart from that world is a rare commodity.
Below: No End: Everything we know about the new Daft Punk record
