“All Hail our Robot Overlords”
One group that has been credited with transforming the dance music scene is composed of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. At first glance, these two names are not easily recognizable by most because the two have taken great care to conceal their identities behind their iconic robot personas. Bangalter and Home-Christo are the masterminds behind the duo, Daft Punk – a musical tour de force of electro, techno, disco, and pop.
Bangalter and Home-Christo met when they were twelve years old while attending a secondary school in Paris. The two instantly became friends through their mutual passion for creating and producing music. This passion manifested into the guitar band, Darlin’, which Bangalter, Home-Christo, and another classmate formed. The trio played some gigs and released a few tracks in the span of six months. As the group gained success, Bangalter and Home-Christo began to lose their motivation for making music. They felt that they were creating work that was “mediocre” which did not allow them to reach their full creative potential. Eventually, the group disbanded and Bangalter and Home-Christo went on to form Daft Punk.
In 1997, Daft Punk released their debut album, Homework, which combined elements of house, techno and rave music. The album went on to be very successful, as it began to define and influence the era’s dance music scene. As the group went on to perform at venues, they would cover their faces using masks – thus begins the evolution of Daft Punk’s mystique. In 2001, Daft Punk released their sophomore album, Discovery. The album represents a transition from the more synthetic sound of Homework as it incorporates disco songs that were sampled from the 70s and 80s. While performing for Discovery, the group debuted their futuristic robot personas. The first costumes were seemingly crude. The masks featured a matrix of LED lights that could display text and had wires that were haphazardly soldered into place. As Daft Punk began to explore more creative projects in the early to late 2000s, the costumes evolved along with their music. The duo tinkered with the design of the costumes and hey became more refined and featured a more minimalistic design. Along with the concealing their identities, the costumes serve an artistic purpose. In an interview the two gave early in their careers, the duo argues that music is often associated with the physical appearance of the artist who creates it. They claim that by hiding their identities with costumes, they allow their work to “speak for itself.” In 2013, Daft Punk released one of their most commercially successful albums, Random Access Memories. The album received critical acclaim from fans and critiques alike and went on to with three Grammys, including album of the year. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/assets/3231067/ly.jpg)
Despite their immense popularity, much about the infamously private group remains unknown. Though, a rare interview that Daft Punk gave in the early 2000s offers the most vivid window into the duo’s creative process. Their work is intensely collaborative as they share the same goal: to make music that is “unique and personal.” Take, for instance, Random Access Memories, an album which took over five years to complete. Daft Punk’s true creativity begins to take form when analyzing the creation of Random Access Memories through the stages of the creative process, a concept explored at length by Dr. Nancy Andreasen in “A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious.” In the paper, Andreasen describes the states of the creative process as preparation, incubation, and production. In the preparation stage, creatives develop the skills that they need to succeed. For Daft Punk, the preparation stage comes from all of their previous works. Random Access Memories incorporates elements of the group's old albums to create a new and unique sound that reflects previous work. The next stage of the creative process, incubation, involves a time where the subconscious mind constantly makes connections and integrates new and old information. Since Random Access Memories took over five years to complete, this incubation period certainly played a part in their creative process. The final stage of the creative process, that Andreasen describes, is production. Bangalter and Home-Christo both say that the best part of making an album is not recording it but writing the music since it is at this stage where the two can be most creative. It is in this production stage where the duo integrates their experiences with previous projects to produce their work.
With their unique style and the innovative manner in which they produce and perform their art, Daft Punk will surely please their fans for years to come.
Sources:
“A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious” by Nancy Andreasen
While it seems that almost all musicians claim that they are just out there to make good music and not to get famous, I think that Daft Punk is one of the only groups who can fully claim that. I never realized the lengths that they went to just to be unnoticed, though I do certainly agree that it adds something to their music when you don't actually see them on magazine covers or in music videos. Additionally, I can't say that they are in it for the money either, as five years is a lot of time to sit on an album if you're just in it to get rich.
ReplyDeleteYour post stuck out to me because their creative genius doesn't just come from the music they produce, but the way that the perform and present themselves to society. I honestly don't think I've ever heard their names before reading this, so obviously what they are doing worked. The only other artists I can think of that operate without us knowing them as a person are Sia and the members of Here Come the Mummies, and all of them do it in a unique way. I think it was a great topic to cover and I would be interested in hearing more about how their collaboration changed their process.
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