Daft Punk, one of the most influential and popular groups to emerge over the past 30 years, announced their retirement via a video titled ‘Epilogue’ posted Monday morning. The duo’s years of publicity officially confirmed the split with Variety and did not want to provide further details.
The eight-minute clip features the duo – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – who have been hiding their functions behind a robot concept for years, walking around in the desert wearing their famous helmets and leather jackets. After a few moments, one of the members looked at the other, took off his jacket and revealed an energy pack on his back. The other touches a button on the suit. The first member quickly walks away and then explodes.
The scene cuts to a sunrise, or possibly a sunset, while a choral rendition of the group’s song ‘Touch’ plays.
The song comes from the duo’s ‘Random Access Memories’ 2013 album, which was a highlight in their careers in many ways. The album, which includes the worldwide hit single “Get Lucky”, won the Grammy Award for Best Album the following year. The duo have since largely maintained a low profile, and their most prominent work was a collaboration with the Weeknd on two songs from his 2016 album ‘Starboy’, the title track and ‘I Feel It Coming’.
Although their representative did not want to say whether the duo will collaborate under different names or whether other new projects are underway, it seems likely, given the group’s famous contradictory and convention-ridiculous history, that they will continue to make music , release videos and whatever other projects it finds.
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met as teenagers at school in Paris in the mid-80s and soon began working on music. They formed a rock band called Darlin ‘in 1992, inspired by the Beach Boys song of the same name, with their friend Laurent Brancowitz in 1992 and released a song on a compilation on Stereolab’s Duophonic label. The song received a negative review in the Melody Maker – describing it as a ‘dull punky thrash’, and the negative review in a step that would set the tone for the rest of their career, changed into their new band name. The two decided to focus on electronic music; Brancowitz left and eventually formed Phoenix.
The two set the new tone for the new group with their first single, “The New Wave”, which was released in 1994. The following year was followed by “Da Funk”, which became a European hit single and formed the pattern for their debut. The album, ‘Homework’, was released in late 1996. The couple, along with manager Pedro Winter, have taken a strong, self-determined course from the start, demanding artistic control and ownership from their masters. years.
The album was one of the best in the wave of electronic dance albums from the mid – nineties and elevated the duo, who at this stage were still performing without disguises, to international stars. They toured extensively and participated in outdoor and solo projects and released a series of innovative videos around ‘Homework’. Towards the end of the decade, the duo came up with a comic story about being injured during an explosion and being forced to hide behind robot masks, and never appearing in public without them.
The duo released their second album “Discovery” in 2001, led by the single “One More Time” – the “disco-lot” implicit in the title was no coincidence, as the album was more pop in nature than the debut and sets a tendency to raise expectations. Indeed, the duo’s next album, “Human After All”, was quickly recorded and probably sounded like an accompaniment track – but these tracks became the basis for the duo’s galvanizing live dates in 2006 and 2007, which had a defining performance on the Coachella Festival in April 2006, a show that declared more than one dance music writer ‘the birth of EDM’. The group performed in an extensive, illuminated pyramid and toured internationally behind the album, releasing an explosive live album ‘Alive 2007’. They reappeared in 2010 with an orchestral soundtrack album for the Disney remake of “Tron”.
The couple spends the next few years again on the expectations: after defining themselves as the ultimate electronic act, they record all the “Random Access Memories” with live instruments and use no digital equipment whatsoever (except for the mix of the album). The album features an unlikely line-up of guests and singers, ranging from chic guitarist Nile Rodgers and singer-rapper Pharrell Williams to 1970s singer-songwriter Paul Williams and musicians to Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” – album from 1979. The end result was a wide combination of futuristic and vintage sounds that took the duo to new levels of popularity and took the Album of the Year Grammy in 2014.
Apart from the two songs with the Weeknd, the duo’s musical efforts have been at a low level in the years since. But given their history in the past, it is highly unlikely that we have heard the last of Bangalter and de Homem-Christo, whether they work together or not, or as Daft Punk.