The dramatic reveal of Daft Punk’s breakup was done as only they could. Delivered in an almost eight-minute video called simply “Epilogue,” the two essentially suicide bomb (peacefully, bien sûr) in order to make the point clear: it’s over. After twenty-eight years of setting the world on fire (and even allowing Americans to believe they know something of European music), Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo are no more as one. Or so they would like us to be convinced.
A sense of jadedness with regard to believing musicians when they say they’re retiring (especially when such a “production” is made about it) has learned to be applied over the years. After all, just look at the band that Daft Punk essentially launched, LCD Soundsystem. With their hit 2005 single, “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House,” the James Murphy-led group may not have been around as long, but they certainly were as beloved and influential. And when they announced their “final show” in 2011, the reaction was, well, peak hipster. This was the early ‘10s in Brooklyn–missing the last LCD Soundsystem show would be a sin, even though it meant schlepping to Madison Square Garden. Of course, it was not to be their last show, and the band went on to perform at numerous festivals in 2016 before releasing their fourth album, American Dream, in 2017.
In Murphy’s defense, when David Bowie urges you to get the band back together before he dies, you fucking well listen. Alas, what icon could convince Daft Punk to reunite? It’s not as though they seem all that reverent toward Paul or Ringo (and, yes, there are some who have likened this breakup to The Beatles). If anything, maybe it would take one of the Pet Shop Boys to cajole them into a return a few years from now. Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant have a similar love story, in a way. They might not have met in their early school days, but the similar interests, the “two become one” nature of Daft Punk’s musical synergy–it’s all very Pet Shop Boys. And if the Brits could unwittingly give Daft Punk their name by calling their first band “daft punky thrash” in a Melody Maker review, then maybe the Brits could somehow get them back together at one point as well.
At the same time, perhaps the duo has realized that their “futuristic” stint is now becoming decidedly “retro” and that what they’ve foretold with their robotic shtick has already come to roost (likely the reason Gorillaz will never go away, thanks to the benefit of not being a “real” band). Which is why Grimes declared we’re at “the end of human art.” No longer “human after all.” Or maybe it’s simply a feeling. An arcane wisdom within that has told them it’s over. Daft Punk is no longer playing at anyone’s house.
Unless it’s an intimate show in a Paris apartment. To that end, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo have always been “very French” about the notion of fame. Bangalter, as the requisite spokesperson for both, once stated, “I know many people who maybe like the way we are handling things. People understand that you don’t need to be on the covers of magazines with your face to make good music. Painters or other artists, you don’t know them but you know what they are doing. We are very happy that the concept in itself is becoming famous. In France, you speak of Daft Punk and I’m sure millions of people have heard it, but less than a few thousand people know our face—which is the thing we’re into. We control it, but it’s not us physically, our persons.” Philosophical indeed. Daft Punk is playing at Simone Weil’s house near Luxembourg Garden.
And it leads one to believe that since the music is the real “person,” not the body from which it emanates, perhaps another iteration of Daft Punk will animate, even if it’s under a different guise. Still masked, one would reckon, for as Bangalter also noted, “The playing with masks is just to make it funnier. Pictures can be boring. We don’t want all the rock n’ roll poses and attitudes—they are completely stupid and ridiculous today.” Tell it to Miley Cyrus.
With such a sentiment, one wonders if Bangalter could have even been convinced by Bowie–as James Murphy was–to get the band back together. Because he was sort of the ultimate example of “rock n’ roll poses and attitudes.” But Daft Punk doesn’t find joy in the mask of makeup, only the mask of the robot. Their “too cool” and “above it all” aura as only the French can exude was rarely compromised during their career. Like when they appeared in a Gap commercial or their music was played in a medley during 2017’s Bastille Day parade in front of Macron and, worse still, Trump (who probably had no idea what he was hearing–not that he can hear anything but the voice inside his head telling him he’s “excellent” 24/7).
This could be part of why they’d prefer to quit while they’re ahead. The corporate sense of it all making it impossible to sustain “an edge.” As LCD Soundsystem also spoke to in “Losing My Edge,” with Murphy lamenting, “I’m losing my edge to the kids from France [side note: interesting that it’s not just Paris] and from London. But I was there.” He goes on to name check Daft Punk (a precursor to the aforementioned single named in their honor) with, “I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids/I played it at CBGB’s/Everybody thought I was crazy.”
Well, not anymore, James Murphy. Not anymore. Like LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, too, has just four albums, yet leaves an indelible imprint on the music industry and the next generation of musicians they will continue to influence. Whether or not the “blowup” allows the pieces of their robotic debris to reanimate, they’ve changed the landscape for good. And maybe more musicians (and TikTokers) would do well to “mask up” not because of a pandemic but because anonymity is hallowed. This, too, must surely account for some aspect of why they’ve defected from Daft Punk.
