Linn Lounge Presents Daft Punk
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Linn Lounge presents Daft Punk Welcome to Linn Lounge presents Daft Punk Tonight we’re going take you on a musical journey, on an electronic journey, listening to Daft Punk in the highest quality available - on a Linn system. Some of the tracks that we’re going to play tonight are in the highest quality Studio Master format, letting you hear the music exactly as it was recorded, before it was altered to fit on a CD or squashed down to MP3 size. So sit back and relax as as we uncover the story behind the French Robo-Duo who brought disco back to the masses. Play ‘Get Lucky’ (Studio Master) – 06:09 Emerging from the kindling flames of early acid-house, Daft Punk represent year zero for dance music as we know it. Bringing electro music to the mainstream, they took the tough, rocky, techno sound of bands like The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy and re-invented it with a four-four beat and melodic, disco style. Their impossibly catchy house music sounded just as great in the pop charts as it did in the deepest depths of a hardcore 90s rave. Surprisingly electro music was not the first interest of the French duo, though. Best friends from the age of 13, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo grew up enraptured by the greats of 60s and 70s pop-rock: The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, The Stooges… This mutual admiration led the boys to form their own band with a school-friend, Laurent Brancowitz, in 1992, calling themselves Darlin’ after a Beach Boys song. Unfortunately Darlin’ only released 2 songs before breaking up. Although this was an impressive feat for a group of 17 year olds, their music was not highly regarded. A British music magazine, Melody Maker, condemned their tracks as “daft punky thrash”, providing the much needed confirmation that a change of path was needed. And of course from this scathing criticism emerged the name of their new band, Daft Punk. In 1993, at the age 18, Thomas and Guy-Man had only just entered the world of nightclubs. They became fascinated by the sound of French House; the way it incited a crowd and got everyone moving. Electronic music was the future. Uninterested in pursuing this dance culture, Laurent branched off to form his own group, Phoenix, leaving Thomas and Guy-Man to experiment with drum machines and synthesizers, creatively inspiring a new world of sound. As a renowned 70s disco music producer and songwriter for the likes of the Gibson Brothers, Ottawan and Sheila B. Devotion, Thomas’ father offered the know-how and means to help the boys achieve their vision of becoming electronic dance artists. He set up a studio for the boys at top of Thomas’ family home in Paris, now revered as the famous Daft House studio. To begin with Daft Punk’s music offered all the best parts of hard-core house, playing tracks that were quite far removed from the more pop-disco style singles they would later become known for. Let’s have a listen to Daft Punk’s early style. This track is one of Thomas and Guy-Man’s earliest works. It was never actually released by the duo. It’s called ‘Drive’. Play section of Drive (CD quality) - 1:18 It wasn’t long before Daft Punk received their big break in 1993. During a rave at EuroDisney in Paris, Thomas and Guy-Man were introduced to Stuart MacMillan and Glenn Gibbons, the co- founders of Glasgow’s independent label, Soma Quality Records. Daft Punk invited Stuart and Glenn to their home studio to hear a few of their tracks. Glenn Gibbons recounted his memories in an interview with Linn; “I remember climbing to the top floor garret of a building in the winding streets of Monmatre in Paris to listen to 2 Tascam Portastudio 4 track recordings from the young French boys. They’d been introduced to us by a fanzine writer at a rave in EuroDisney a few nights before. I was beginning to think that Toulouse Lautrec and Vincent Van Gough may have had their studios up here way back in the 19th Century, when Thomas Bangalter hit the play button and BOOM ! They blew us away with a couple of hard techno tunes (The New Wave and Assault). Later on we walked back through Paris, past the Moulin Rouge, mesmerised. We had just heard the first tracks by Daft Punk and knew there was something very special happening here. Da Funk came soon after and the rest, as they say, is History!” Daft Punk went on to release 2 tracks under Soma Records. It was an ideal relationship. Soma allowed them complete creative freedom while also introducing them to the 90s UK rave scene, passing on their tracks to DJs across the country. Their second track on Soma was ‘Da Funk’. It was released in 1995 and became an immediate hit. It still remains an iconic song for the band today. Its rolling 303 lines made Daft Punk one of the quickest and most surprising successes in the dance world, uniting the ranks of snobbish music critics with the masses of club goers seeking a good groove. Even early on, Daft Punk’s incredible attention to sonic detail was notable and it wasn’t long before the band began see imitators of their disco-filter sound. They seemed to be merging prog rock, pop, disco and house – a combination no one before them had really considered. However, in an interview with a Swedish music magazine, Thomas revealed that ‘Da Funk’ was actually influenced by the Westcoast G-Funk that he and Guy-Man had been listening to on repeat. ‘Da Funk’ was their slant on hip-hop, though no one else really agreed. Thomas notes that; "It was around the time Warren G’s ‘Regulate’ was released and we wanted to make some sort of gangsta-rap and tried to murk our sounds as much as possible. However no one has ever compared it to hip-hop. We've heard that the drums sounds like Queen and The Clash, the melody is reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder, and the synthesizers sound like electro and thousands of other comparisons. No one agrees with us that it sounds like hip-hop!" Play Da Funk with video (CD quality) - 5:29 ‘Da Funk’ had spawned a bidding war among record labels across the globe. It was already a huge underground and commercial hit. Its video was directed by the enigmatic Spike Jonze and received heavy rotation on MTV and other shows around the globe. The singles’ B-side, ‘Rollin’ & Scratchin’’ was hammered at European raves to the point of being overplayed. But Daft Punk weren’t interested in unearned fame or money. They wanted a partnership that allowed them freedom to create and move in any direction they wanted. They eventually settled for a contract with Virgin Records, turning down more lucrative offers in favour of creative licence. Virgin would abide to the duos strict rules. Daft Punk would hold exclusive rights to all master recordings, licensing the tracks on a deal- by-deal basis to Virgin, and no photographs of the group where their faces were to be exposed. Daft Punk soon recorded their first full-length album, Homework, releasing it 1997. It was a funk- house hailstorm, giving real form to a style of straight-ahead dance music that had not been attempted since the early fusion days of funk and disco. Homework offers thick, pounding bass, vocoders, choppy breaks and beats, and a certain brash naiveté helped along by its home studio production. The record gave dance music the healthy revival that it sorely needed. Dance albums tended only to cross over into the UK’s guitar-centric mainstream if, as Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers and Underworld had shown, vocals were included to break up all the repetitive beats. Homework, however, clearly paid homage to Chicago’s acid-house, using squealing synths, few vocals and funky, techno beats. One of the catchiest tracks of the decade, ‘Around the World’ was released as a single from this album, with a surreal music video from famed French director, Michel Gondry. Reaching #1 in the dance charts, ‘Around the World’ was revered for its sense of futurism aided by its steady hook bassline and robotic repetitions of the title. Daft Punk noted it was simple, ‘like making a Chic record with talk box and just playing the bass on the synthesizer.” Michel Gondry appreciated its sensual simplicity, explaining; "I realized how genius and simple the music was. Only five different instruments, with very few patterns, each to create numerous possibilities of figures. Always using the repetition, and stopping just before it's too much." Gondry wanted to represent this in his music video, illustrating each instrument as separate group of characters, all dancing on a platform that symbolised a vinyl record. Gondry’s robots represent the singing voice; the physicality and small-minded speed of the athletes symbolizes the ascending/descending bass guitar; the femininity of the disco girls represents the high-pitched keyboard; the "itchy" skeletons dance to the guitar line; and the mummies represent the drum machine. Let’s have a look. Play ‘Around the World’ music video (DVD quality) - 4:04 Unknown to many, Thomas and Guy-Man also spend time working on their own side projects. In 1995 Thomas set up his own record label called Roulé, using it as a periodic outlet for music, while in 1997 Guy-Man co-founded the label, Crydamoure.