Monday, 15 June 2009
Welcome back to the artist spotlight. These are intended to educate and provide a basic commentary on the chosen band, and listing their biggest hits, as well as the hidden gems they've recorded.
This week the spotlight is on Daft Punk.
Daft Punk are a french electronic music duo consisting of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. They rose to prominence in the late 90s house movement and have enjoyed years of success since then as one of the defining artists of the genre.
Having met in secondary school, the two musicians formed an indie rock band named Darlin', named after the Beach Boys song. After a string of negative reviews, of which a particularly negative critic described them as 'a bunch of daft punk', the band disbanded, but Bangalter and de Homem-Christo found the review so amusing that they adopted the name 'Daft Punk' for their next project, an experiment using drum machines and synthesizers.
In 1996, after the release of an EP and their first successful single Da Funk, they signed a record deal with Virgin Records. After being presented with a choice between artistic control and more money from the label, they chose control, and it looks like a smart decision on their part. In 1997 their first album Homework was released.
Their next album, Discovery, released in 2001, would go on to become one of the defining albums of the electronic music scene, adopting a more playful synthpop sound than their older work. Single One More Time in particular became a major club hit.
Having achieved worldwide recognition and renown for their robotic personae, as seen in the picture, the offers kept coming in, with appearances in various tv commercials, and going on to produce the anime film Interstella 5555 which featured songs from their Discovery album. They later went on to direct their own feature film Electroma, which in a change in style did not feature any of their songs. However their most recent studio album Human after all was met with mixed reviews, despite achieving moderate success anyway.
Since this release in 2004 there hasn't been any new music from them, despite a few successful live album releases, the most recent of which Alive 2007 featured mash ups of their songs and went on to win at the Grammy Awards. During this same ceremony they made a rare and very special live appearance to do a solo during Kanye West's Stronger (video included- awesome), which featured heavily sampling from their single Harder Better Faster Stronger.
Fans anxiously awaiting a fourth studio album are still disappointed to hear little if any news from the band, though it has been announced that Daft Punk will be making the soundtrack for the new TR2N movie, which will have to tide them over for now. It has also been rumored that Daft Punk may be making a videogame appearance in the upcoming DJ Hero, though frankly with their catalogue they should really get their own dedicated game in the mold of what has recently been done with Aerosmith, Van Halen and the Beatles.
And now on to the fun bit, the recommended songs:
Essentials:
Digital Love
One More Time
Harder Better Faster Stronger
Delving Deeper:
Around the World
Aerodynamic
