Fifteen-seconds was all it took; history was changed forever. As if time were running out, millions of fingers across the world hammered breathless onomatopoeias of excitement and disbelief into social media sites, simultaneously demonstrating the immediacy and neutered passion of modern music fandom in real-time. Could this be real? Had the day many swore would never come arrived at last? Was this really a clip teasing the long-awaited fourth album from cult heroes Daft Punk?
When "Saturday Night Live" ran an impossibly short advertisement for "Random Access Memories" - the first new LP from the French electronic duo in eight years - on March 2, igniting an avalanche of renewed interest in its music, many merely wondered what the release date was, but, perhaps we all should have been asking ourselves an entirely more relevant question. Does the world really need another Daft Punk record?
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are two of the most famous musicians in the world - that you have no idea who these two people are is part of the secret behind the power and success of the pair's music as Daft Punk. And it may also be exactly why the idea of another Daft Punk record is pointless in 2013.
It's difficult to remember, but the 90s were often unkind to popular music. The Internet was still a nascent experiment languishing behind a scuffed-up Ford Pinto in the back of Al Gore's garage. Beyond traditional channels like friends, family, concerts, record stores, or the radio, finding new music firmly depended on the cruel, mercurial mistress MTV, a sadistic harpy long forgotten by the history books, who demanded round-the-clock human sacrifices on her altar to the pop gods. An artist's image had always been an integral part of their marketing; then, it became almost everything. If fame didn't depend on music videos and the amplified personas strutting around in them, you would have had a hard time guessing otherwise.
Following the salad days of grunge in the early half of the decade, and subsequent punk-like dilution to little more than a fashion trend punctuated by Eddie Vedder howls, "rock" music all but disappeared, cannibalizing Nirvana riffs until there was nearly nothing left; gangsta rap pervaded the
airwaves, but was often relegated to unfortunate time slots thanks to song and video content; then, "Total Request Live" transformed the musical landscape into something so unrecognizable it was like waking up to find you'd blacked out and had an overnight sex change.
In an era of pop music defined by shiny boy bands and gin and juice, there was no reason Daft Punk should have existed - which may be exactly why they were such an exalted treasure. You couldn't pin them down, their music or their identities. At first, the decision to remain mysterious figures shrouded by their own songs was purely coincidental. When the duo's first record, "Homework," was released in 1997, Homem-Christo and Bangalter say they chose to not appear in any of the promotions or music videos for the album simply because they were shy. It didn't make any difference. The album was clearly the work of a new voice, as were the bold videos of aliens and dog-faced men that followed, directed by the likes of Spike Jonez and Roman Coppola, helping catapult Daft Punk to international acclaim, and selling millions all over the world in the process. Many called "Homework" the best dance music in years, and some even argued it was the defining statement of French house music. Then came the robots.
Suddenly, with the release of its next record, "Discovery," in 2001, Daft Punk shot into light speed. With the help of special effects designer Tony Gardner and the movie effects gurus at Alterian Inc., the group morphed itself into the personification of its own music we all know today, creating a seamless conceptual tapestry out of their songs and their myth. Daft Punk was no longer merely just a duo of faceless French DJs who made impeccable electronic music - they were robots from the future who communicated through nothing but melody and rhythm. You could no longer listen to Daft Punk songs without seeing the two vaguely Sci-Fi, "Battle Star Gallactica"- esqe robots who crafted them as well; they were inseparable.
Daft Punk chased this artistic sensibility wherever it lead them. They released action figures in Japan. Produced a feature-length animated film, "Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem," using each song on "Discovery" for a different vignette in the movie, directed another, "Daft Punk's Electroma," which paradoxically didn't contain Daft Punk music, and began directing their own music videos. They did a Gap ad with Juliette Lewis soundtracked by "Digital Love." And audiences never tired of trying to keep up.
Of course, the music was good, too; that helped. As they combined house music, dance, hip-hop production, disco, techno, synth pop, rave music, soul, R&B, electro and more idiosyncratic esoteric sub-genres than a
Pitchfork review, Daft Punk became a consummate gateway into electronic music for many. That someone who detests rave and "festival" culture with a passion only equaled by breathing could grow to love Daft Punk as much as the most wide-eyed acolyte of glow-in-the-dark pacifiers and MDMA is a testament to the transcendence of their art and music. A sentiment shared by many of the group's fans who might not have otherwise ever listened to anything described as "electronic," and corroborated by Daft Punk's enduring influence in genres as disparate as modern rap, with everyone from Swizz Beatz, Busta Rhymes, Kanye West and Missy Elliott to Janet Jackson and JoJo sampling their songs.
So why ruin that legacy by releasing another record now? It seems like the least Daft Punk decision Homem-Christo and Bangalter could make right now would be to release another album. With so many planets already conquered, receding back into the mist of their own myth would be the ultimate embodiment of the Sci-Fi tropes Daft Punk inhabits. Not to mention the duo's cultural saturation is a foregone conclusion at this point.
While Daft Punk hasn't entirely removed itself from the popular music conversation in recent years - releasing "Human After All" in 2005, and scoring "Tron" in 2010 - the focus has certainly shifted. Now, we hang helplessly above a beckoning chasm forged by the new torchbearers of "electronic" music: "dubstep." Some will over intellectualize the genre, defining it by BPMs and "sub bass frequencies," and that probably fits a particular niche, but for all intents and purposes, dubstep in America has come to represent nothing more than the realization of the worst elements of festival music, a simplistic slathering of layer-upon-layer of ear-splitting, flatulent bass tones, an odd-placed vocal sample or two and the sonic signatures of Hot Topic metal.
It's not that dubstep's overwhelming of the senses is particularly offensive, it's just redundant in 2013. No doubt there are original bands within the genre, but for every unique act there seem to be 10 Skrillex clones endlessly rehashing the same "more is more" mentality. Say what you will about the "realness" of electronic artists, but for people making such ostensibly cold music, Daft Punk's songs were almost always full of heart. The duo's albums might have been written and recorded by machines, but their songs somehow still retain humanity and the organic touch of classic composition, as if you could see Homem-Christo and Bangalter tinkering while "Something About Us" funked its way through your headphones.
In a popular music atmosphere even the least bit dominated by a genre as head-slappingly cyclical as American dubstep, maybe we really do need
some robot overlords to come save the day. Eight years was all it took for "Random Access Memories" to arrive, and thank god. The future may be as obscure as the men behind Daft Punk, but at least they've returned to show us where we're headed next.
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