A lot will happen in the tiny Australian tablelands town of Wee Waa next weekend when Daft Punk ”launch” their new album, Random Access Memories, at the Wee Waa Show.
But, for now, we can confirm that Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, the French disco-meets-philosophy brains behind Daft Punk, are nowhere near country New South Wales as we speak.
They are not even in the same room together, conducting the interview apart at their Parisian homes. And without helmets.
In private, before small groups of non-camera-carrying people, they appear with hair and flesh and facial features, like mere mortals. But, otherwise, they are never seen on stage or in photos without the intimidatingly blank bike-space helmets that have earnt them the nickname the Robots, a name used even by collaborators such as Pharell Williams. Anonymity rules, even after 20 years – and 14 years since their first massive hits, One More Time and Around the World.
Typically, though, it’s anonymity with a philosophical as well as practical purpose.
De Homem-Christo says they enjoy being able to live normal lifestyles, but the masks also mean ”we’ve been able to create those personalities that are not anonymous that can somehow support exposure but in a fictional way”. It’s a kind of perfect modern hybrid for what they call the ”project” of Daft Punk.
”It feels that this is really a fiction, a show that we designed and with this personality that is definitely part of our project,” de Homem-Christo says.
He is the quieter of the two but becomes quite voluble when asked if it matters that some people assume – because Daft Punk are disguised and not afraid of irony and playfulness – they are not serious about their craft.
Yes, he says, ”there is definitely a certain degree of humour in that, but that’s showmanship”. While they don’t take themselves seriously, ”if you respect the audience and on stage you put on a disguise, that is part of the show”, and that is understood. Bangalter adds that, along with the masks, a career that has produced only four albums and infrequent tours ”has given people an understanding that our intent is not to take advantage of them or of the situation”.
”It feels like over these 20 years we behaved ourselves with a certain definition of radicality, a certain artistic integrity,” Bangalter says. ”We feel a bit like it’s almost a cliche of a family dinner where we have a family member that never speaks at the table but when they speak everybody takes a listen. We feel a bit like that. That’s just the nature of things: if you don’t communicate that much, when it happens people tend to notice more.”
Still, de Homem-Christo says, ”we don’t really worry about … what the audience might think”.
”When we make a piece of music we don’t worry whether they will like it or not; we are really trying to create the music that we want to listen to as individuals,” he says. ”We think it’s the healthiest way.
”We say that we are the guinea pigs of our experiment, we are doing things on ourselves, and if the audience can enjoy it as much as we do then that’s great. If they don’t, that’s not a big deal. It’s another offering, another invitation of entertainment among many, many invitations that are available these days.”
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The new Daft Punk album, which, in theory, should be heard for the first time in Wee Waa on Friday – though keep an eye on the internet for leaks, official or otherwise – is perhaps the best example of de Homem-Christo and Bangalter making music for themselves.
From the musical and cultural references (unlikely Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac touches, along with the less-surprising Giorgio Moroder talking about his career over late-’70s disco) and guest artists (Williams, Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, soft-pop songwriter Paul Williams and disco giant Nile Rodgers), we are getting an insight into the pair’s musical loves, influences and ”slightly utopian idea of making coexist many, many different things together”.
”We are really music lovers and art lovers,” Bangalter says. ”Guy-Man and I met almost 27 years ago when we were early teenagers and our friendship was sealed over a love of art and music. This record somehow – it’s true – is like a teenager’s fantasy of trying to create something with musicians and artists that inspired us and that are keeping on inspiring us today and have also saved us as human beings and musicians.”
The technical crew and backing musicians on the album are drawn from old favourites as well as contemporary recordings. The concept is to have a radical (for modern dance-focused recordings) example of using real sounds, bodies and instruments alongside technology to capture ”the magic”.
”Our first three records were made with discrete hardware and analog electronic components and musical instruments, which we would make connections [with] and try to use in different ways,” Bangalter says. ”We felt we would not be stimulated by making music on a computer, just because it felt either easy or lazy.
”Also, we were interested in the idea of transmission of the craftsmanship. In this idea of transmission, we said that there was something interesting about recreating the circumstances, going back to these magical places, these iconic recording studios and working with these engineers.
”It was not just favouring the past but it was important for us to have first-hand witness of this era, this golden age, to guide us.”
WEE WAA YES, SERIOULSLY
Daft Punk won’t be there in person and they had never heard of the NSW country town until recently.
But the suggestion from the local record company that they launch their album during the Wee Waa Show fitted the conceptual brief the Frenchmen had drafted.
The French duo’s Thomas Bangalter says: ”It felt for us that this record has a certain aspect of random quality, and the idea of breaking the barriers between cities and the countryside, or between the musical genres or any sort of classification. So we thought this [the Wee Waa launch party] was a poetic idea.
”This album was made on the grounds of doing things in music that are triggering imagination, and this can be a certain arrangement in a song triggering imagination or, in the same way, the idea of launching music in a small town in Australia is by itself part of the fictional narrative that feels like it’s a scene of the film.”
The only thing that could be better is if they beam down, via hologram maybe, into Wee Waa and greet us as visitors from the planet Daft Punk.
”You know, with the imagination there is no limit,” Bangalter says, teasingly. ”The problem is if you meet people’s expectations or not.”
BEHIND THE ROBOT UPRISING
”Technology is fascinating,” Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter says. ”It’s mostly the subject of everything we have done artistically over the last 20 years: the exponential curve of the importance of technology.
”That’s why we use the robot personalities – because we felt the robots are a metaphor of technology.
”The concept of the robot encapsulates both aspects of technology. On one hand it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s healthy, it’s sexy, it’s stylish. On the other hand it’s terrifying, it’s alienating, it’s addictive and it’s scary. That has been the subject of much science-fiction literature.”
The main problem Daft Punk have with technology in and outside the studio today is the idea that it would make room for humans to focus on more important things, when, in fact, it makes everyone lazier.
”The problem with it is this misconception that it is this series of tools that are becoming extremely integrated with every human being on a very intimate level; this extension in everybody’s hand and everybody’s pocket,” a sceptical Bangalter says.
”But because you can store on your small, connective devices all this information that you don’t need to store in your brain, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to use our brain in a much more clever way.
”Rather, it is the opposite.”
Random Access Memories is out on May 17.
– Sydney Morning Herald
