Daft Punk, one of the most influential and popular groups to emerge in the past 30 years, announced his retirement through a video entitled “Epilogue” posted on Monday morning. The duo’s longtime publicist officially confirmed the split for Variety and declined to provide further details.
The eight-minute clip features the duo – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – who for many years hid their characteristics behind a robot concept, walking through the desert, wearing their well-known space helmets and leather jackets. After a few moments, one of the members looks at the other, takes off his jacket and reveals a bundle of energy in the back. The other touches a button on the packaging. The first member moves away quickly and then explodes.
The scene cuts to a sunrise, or possibly a sunset, while a choral version of the group’s song “Touch” plays.
The song is from the 2013 album “Random Access Memories”, which in many ways was the culmination of his career. The album, which included the globally successful single “Get Lucky”, won the Grammy for Best Album the following year. The duo has kept a low profile ever since, with their most prominent work being a collaboration with Weeknd on two songs from their 2016 album, “Starboy”, the title track and “I Feel It Coming”
Although their representative declined to say whether the duo will continue to work with different names or whether other new projects are underway, it seems likely, given the group’s notoriously opposing and mocking story, that they will continue to release songs and videos and any projects they like.
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met in the mid-1980s at school in Paris, when they were teenagers, and soon after they started working together on music. They formed a rock band called Darlin ‘, inspired by the song of the same name by the Beach Boys, 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 on Melody Maker – which he called described as “a punky thrash daft” – and, in a move that would set the tone for the rest of his career, turned the negative review into his new band name. The two decided to focus on electronic music; Brancowitz left and finally formed the Phoenix.
The duo set the tone for the new group with their first single, “The New Wave”, released in 1994. It was followed the following year by “Da Funk”, which became a successful European single and formed the model for their debut album, “Homework”, released in late 1996. The duo, along with businessman Pedro Winter, set a strong self-determined course from the beginning, demanding artistic control and ownership from their masters, which they licensed to major labels during the years old.
The album was one of the best in the wave of electronic dance albums of the mid-1990s and elevated the duo, who at that time were still undisguised, to international stardom. They traveled extensively and got involved in solo and outdoor projects and released a series of innovative videos on “Homework”. Around the turn of the decade, the pair invented a comic story about being injured in an explosion and being forced to hide behind robot masks, and never appeared publicly without them.
The duo released their second album, “Discovery” in 2001, led by the single “One More Time” – the “disco-very” implied in the title was no accident, as the album was more pop than the debut and set one tendency to raise expectations. In fact, the duo’s next album, “Human After All”, was recorded quickly and no doubt sounded like backing tracks – but these tracks became the basis for the duo’s electrifying live dates in 2006 and 2007, which included a definitive presentation at the Coachella festival in April 2006, a show that more than one dance music writer declared “the birth of EDM”. Performing within an elaborate illuminated pyramid, the group went on an international tour behind the album, releasing an explosive live album, “Alive 2007”, several years later. They resurfaced in 2010 with an orchestral soundtrack album for Disney’s remake of “Tron”.
The duo spent the next few years raising expectations again: after defining themselves as the biggest electronic act, they recorded all “Random Access Memories” with live instruments and did not use any digital equipment (except for the album mix). The album featured an unlikely number of guest performers and singers, from guitarist Chic Nile Rodgers and singer and rapper Pharrell Williams to singer and songwriter Paul Williams from the 1970s and musicians who worked on Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” album. 1979. The end result was a wide mix of futuristic and vintage sounds that brought the duo to new levels of popularity, taking the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2014.
In addition to the two songs with Weeknd, the duo’s musical efforts in the years that followed were discreet. But, given their past history, it is extremely unlikely that we have heard the last word from Bangalter and Christo-Man, whether they are working together or not, or as Daft Punk.