Electronic Music Artists From 2013 Recorded Album With Baby on Lap
In spite of the robotic persona they've cultivated for years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo elected to brand the latest Daft Punk anthology in a real studio, with existent musicians. David Black/Courtesy of the artist hide caption
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David Black/Courtesy of the creative person
In spite of the robotic persona they've cultivated for years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo elected to brand the latest Daft Punk album in a real studio, with existent musicians.
David Black/Courtesy of the artist
With a few Grammy Awards backside their helmets, All Things Considered revisits a conversation with Daft Punk. Information technology originally aired May xvi, 2013.
French electronic duo Daft Punk burst out of the late-'90s dance movement with music they produced in a home studio. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo congenital a cult following wearing robot helmets onstage and in the press, and mostly working alone. But they recorded their new album, Random Access Memories , in professional studios, with existent live musicians. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo spoke to All Things Considered's Audie Cornish from London. You tin listen to the radio version at the audio link and read more than of their chat below.
The lead single from your new album is called "Get Lucky" and the vocalist is Pharrell Williams, but I sympathize it was co-written past you and Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, who was a big producer of the '70s. What does this song tell us virtually the album?
THOMAS BANGALTER: This song is really in some sense — can be a summary of this record, this album, Random Access Memories, that we're but near to release. We've been making dance music, myself and Guy-Homo, for about 20 years now. Initially, we were making business firm music and electronic music in our bedroom for a very long time and simply nosotros were e'er very influenced past a lot of classic records including Chic records and a lot of the disco records that Nile Rodgers wrote and produced.
And information technology was somehow maybe a child'due south dream to possibly 1 day be able to make music with ane of the musicians nosotros really love. And and then "Become Lucky" is really about this come across between Nile and besides Pharrell Williams, which we've been friends with and which we've worked with in the by, but about actually teaming up and getting outside of our home studio and really reaching out to other musicians and performers and making music and having fun in the studio making music together. This record is really about the music nosotros wanted to mind to right now and so it'southward this kind of summer disco jam that we wanted to make with Nile and Pharrell.
It'south interesting considering both of these producers, Nile [Rodgers] and Pharrell Williams, are very closely aligned with the kind of menses that they came out of. I mean, Pharrell is one of the definitive producers of the aughts — kind of modern hip-hop — and Rodgers is obviously a huge vocalisation of late '70s radio and disco.
BANGALTER: In that sense we could say that we came out of the '90s and of this new French electronic music scene in '90s and defining a certain sound at the same time. Just information technology felt interesting to us to say, "OK, permit's just squad up with the unlike talents and let's endeavour to make the music of today."
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So it's truthful there was no sense on this record to think really about the futurity of music or the music of the future, rather than really to focus on, OK, what are nosotros missing right at present as music and what is the music we want to brand?
And it sounds like this speaks to the album title. Random Access Memories. Plainly RAM is a reference to a kind of estimator information storage. What does it mean for yous hither?
BANGALTER: Information technology's the parallel between computers and hard drive and the homo encephalon, but it's really too having fun with the word "memory," which has become a very technical, very sterile term and word. And obviously when you utilise the plural, which is "memories," it's something that is totally unlike. Information technology's something that is highly emotional and we were ever very interested in the difference between technology and humanity and the deviation between something that has an emotional quality and something that has not whatsoever kind of emotional quality in the world of engineering science.
So it felt like going from a very technical term — that is, random admission memory — to random access memories completely inverse the perception of those iii words and fabricated them extremely human being in the style that we wanted to pursue the concept of this record and the procedure of making this record in the most human way possible.
On the album, there's a vocal called "Beyond" and it is somewhat of a departure from what people expect of your music in that it opens with this kind of orchestral introduction. Pretty soon afterward, this vocal gets to the digitally contradistinct robo voices that people might recognize from your music. But talk a footling bit about the apply of live instrumentation and orchestral elements in this album.
BANGALTER: After the last world tour that we did in 2006 and 2007, we stopped making our music for nearly a yr and a half and worked on the score for Tron: Legacy, which was a Disney film. And it was a very interesting opportunity for usa. First, considering we love film-making and we love pic scoring in full general, only also it was an opportunity to work with an orchestra — something nosotros've always wanted to explore and do — and really stopping this procedure of our own.
[To] spend 12 or xiv or 15 months working with orchestral music really opened us to the idea of team work and the idea of working with musicians and also a certain idea of a spectacle. Information technology's true that it'due south something that we've tried to gradually do, you know, with our characters and our person equally robots and trying to build this fantasy or fiction in an entertaining way.
And later having created a very aggressive tour and show effectually electronic music with — nosotros were standing every bit robots in this big, primitive light — we idea that a way to keep on that spectacle was to piece of work with orchestral ensembles every bit well as electronic layers and electronic elements.
We actually loved it and loved that exchange with the musicians and the performers and decided to effort to exercise a new record just doing it with live musicians — non only limited to orchestral orchestrations only too to live drummers and bass players and guitar players and keyboard players. And do somehow an experiment with pop music in a new style for united states.
We kind of joke and say that this tape, Random Access Memories, is our first studio album fifty-fifty though nosotros've been making music for xx years. Merely this was an opportunity to work with musicians and to glorify, you lot know, live performances and the magic of human performances and possibly exercise a trivial bit of dance music at the same time.
Was that scary for you?
BANGALTER: It's not really scary. I mean we're not scared of experimenting. I think it's the opposite. It's a very exciting process. Information technology'south a picayune chip overwhelming in some sense, but we usually like to have our time.
You know, we're releasing music every three, four, v years. The final studio album — the concluding album we did as Daft Punk — was in 2005. Nosotros released Tron in 2010, which was a score so not actually a proper Daft Punk album.
Merely being able to — taking our time and experimenting is definitely some kind of a luxury but it's not really scary because nosotros experience very, very free and very liberated from any constraints. We really feel we have the freedom to experiment, and if we don't like something, you lot know, we might piece of work a few weeks or sometimes a few months on some ideas and we put everything to the trash and so nosotros outset once more.
Nosotros like the thought of not building the next experiment on past experiences, and then we similar the thought of feeling like beginners all over once more. Nosotros felt like total beginners when we did the Tron score and here because information technology was going into a studio and doing a record in the same way that people would do tape peradventure xxx or 40 years agone.
Although with a certain — as if we also had known what happened the 30 following years, you know. So that was interesting. Nosotros were most sometimes putting ourselves into a studio feeling, okay, we might exist in 1978 when we're doing that on the process but at the aforementioned time we exactly know what happened in the next 35 years.
Daft Punk'southward music has been so closely aligned — or has been the inspiration for electronic dance music as people might recognize it at present coming out of their radio. Did you make a conscious endeavor to back away from the tools of that sound, which these days is the laptop?
BANGALTER: There's a confusion sometimes with the laptop being the current tools and where electronic music initially comes from. We come from the previous generation of electronic music producers — before the age of the laptop. So a lot — about of the electronic music we've done was fabricated in a home studio that was some kind of a collection of hardware components of drum machines, synthesizers, samplers, petty guitar pedals and in a kind of a DIY process.
Simply where we were collecting different pieces of hardware and making the connections in between them to create our own creative ecosystem in some sense, a laptop today is a completely dissimilar beast. Information technology's somehow, most of the time, some kind of a timecode solution with a piece of software and a lot of different virtual instruments within. And so information technology'south a very different process.
It'southward most like comparison someone that does practical special furnishings using miniatures and model-making and fourth dimension-lapse photography and and then someone that has been working on a reckoner doing CGI furnishings. And then it is constructed — it is synthesis. But making music with a computer today is what you can call virtual synthesis, which is most something different.
We actually wanted to say, in our quest of experimenting with electronics and experimenting with what the future could be, we might have forgotten some techniques that are gradually disappearing. So we definitely used computers on this tape but we tried to use technology in an invisible way. We said it earlier in the same way that maybe Peter Jackson can employ technology to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, to put information technology to screen. This record that we're doing here is not a technological tape in the way where you would put technology on pinnacle of information technology. You're hiding it under.
Is at that place a song on the album that is a proficient instance of that kind of invisible engineering?
BANGALTER: Yes, the song "Touch" that we recorded and wrote with Paul Williams is an interesting case because information technology's a vocal that has a certain timeless quality. In that location'southward definitely some Dixieland part in it and some more psychedelic synthesizers and some kids choir and a lot of furnishings. It has virtually 250 tracks in the song and we could not accept handled as many tracks 30 or 40 years ago.
Multi-tracks were limited to 24 tracks. You could maybe synch two multi-rails tape recorders together and that would give you about 48 tracks — and although if you took a third one it's — but using 250 tracks to make this recording showed that we were trying to create something that's timeless but at the same time using the upwardly-to-date modern horsepower of computers today that couldn't fifty-fifty, was not even possible maybe 10 years ago.
This tape definitely uses computers and applied science in many ways — it but doesn't actually utilize computers as musical instruments. They're to handle assets and pieces of audio and also in society to edit the music and put it together.
We were just not actually feeling comfortable as musicians to be able to perform and capture sure emotions simply with computers as musical instruments rather than using a guitar or analog synthesizers or a pianoforte, a trombone, a bass, a live drum kit.
On the vocal that features Giorgio Moroder, "Giorgio by Moroder," you hear him describing how he first got into using synthesizers. And he is an Italian producer that helped make some of the biggest dance records of the late '70s — is synonymous with the piece of work of Donna Summer, "I Feel Love" and electronic music that really is a forerunner to what we hear today. Can you lot tell me what kind of an influence was he on your music?
BANGALTER: Giorgio Moroder is an important influence for us because he'due south a pioneer of some sort and he has this amazing career and life journey. He started in a modest boondocks in Italia and went on to play in hotel lounges in the early '60s. And then had this career in High german pop music in the tardily '60s and ended upwardly nearly inventing or beingness part of the founders of disco and electronic music and somehow techno in the mid-'70s. After that he moved to Hollywood. He won University Awards for the music of Midnight Express and Top Gun, merely did music for Flashdance.
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It's really interesting to just wait at the career of a musician and a producer that went into many different genres and many dissimilar styles and many different places just always breaking the barriers between genres and at some bespeak reinventing himself all along the way just besides inventing things at the same fourth dimension.
We live today at a moment where in that location's a focus on electronic music and a focus on how electronic music might be this new trend or new music, and it was fun for united states of america to do a track around the life of Giorgio, this man that'south in his 70s and speaks virtually his connection with techno and electronic music that happened forty years ago.
Also the idea of making a track which is almost similar an autobiography or like a documentary was something interesting to united states of america considering it felt in the class that it was original. And when nosotros have an idea that we feel is original that hasn't been washed, nosotros usually, you know, write it on a small notepad and try to see if we can make something out of information technology.
Do you think acts from the tardily '70s, early '80s — some of the big popular acts — took more chances than people do today?
BANGALTER: When y'all expect at what we tin can telephone call the golden era of concept albums, which starts in the mid or late '60s and ends perhaps in the early '80s, it's an interesting time for music. Y'all come across all these very established and pop acts and bands and artists that were somehow on the meridian of their game but really trying to experiment. To brand these actually ambitious records and take a lot of risks and reinventing their sound in some sense and actually experimenting with recording techniques and experimenting with composition.
The best example is probably the well-nigh famous one, which are The Beatles, which at the fourth dimension were the biggest artists and the biggest band on the planet. And the series of records and albums that they worked on and produced with George Martin in the late '60s are really, at each time, a consummate reinvention and actually an idea of pushing the limit and feeling okay. There was a fourth dimension where these established artists were the people that were experimenting the most.
The experimentation has been now in the easily of the underground scene — of the alternative, the independent scenes. The alternative and independent scene of bands that are really experimenting but they might not have a lot of the means to do so. It's what nosotros tin can call in French something chosen bricolage — meaning that you lot try to experiment with what you accept, even if you accept some limited means.
But the time for ambitious experimentation with some means in this idea of an experimental super-production in music seems to have been long gone. And we're definitely not the — nosotros oasis't been the biggest-selling artist but we experience we are today. We accept been established artists, and we wanted to accept the chance of trying to experiment — or bring back a sense of ambition, of artistic ambition in trying to experiment and doing something that is not around at a certain time. We liked the idea of doing something we had never done and that no one was doing right at present.
It sounds like, with the song "Doin' It Right," which features Panda Carry, that you're posing the question to yourselves, essentially, that if y'all're doing information technology right, people will withal dance. But is information technology with some apprehension? Are you nervous near how the album volition be received?
GUY-MANUEL DE HOMEM-CHRISTO: I don't recall nosotros are actually worried about — I mean, we cannot — we are concerned, but from the start we made music only Thomas and me in a small sleeping room and we just were having fun and we yet are having fun. And that's the main — that's what we like to do and that'south what information technology's been for xx years.
The magic — nosotros can effort to capture the magic — the music that comes out of the speakers. That sparkle of magic that nosotros tin can go sometimes is just what we are looking for and if information technology works while we're in the studio the ii of united states of america, so we think that maybe we tin can share it with an audition. And information technology's been the instance from the beginning.
So the primary priority for us is to be happy with what we are doing, you know? And we brand certain that the issue, with a test of time, that the songs we are doing are still relevant after a few months or a few weeks to us, and if we are still happy after that time then nosotros share it with people.
Simply nosotros've never — the worst for the states would be to put out some music that we don't totally validate. That's why from the outset we worked with a major visitor, but at the aforementioned time nosotros've been producer of our music and independent.
The large departure with Random Admission Memories and maybe Tron is that we decided to share the experience of making music with a bigger team. Nosotros are non really skilled musicians. I mean, I tin play a little bit of guitar. Thomas can play piano. For once nosotros decided to get out of this sleeping accommodation and non be playing the few loops that we were able to play as poor musicians. We are actually really happy to see that our vision has been held and that we were able to become a lot of people on lath and to share this album with all these people. To encounter all the enthusiasm is perhaps one of the things that is the virtually — that we are the most happy about.
Guy-Man, before Thomas said that yous guys were trying to make the music of today — that something was missing, in a style. What do you lot think that is? What is the music of today?
DE HOMEM-CHRISTO: Music of today is a lot of dissimilar styles, a lot of dissimilar genres. Equally Thomas pointed out, information technology's a lot generated by computers, and information technology'due south all in the box, in your laptop. From the beginning, with our first album, we wanted to make the music that maybe was lacking around united states of america — the music that nosotros wanted to hear.
And information technology'southward truthful that for the last few years, with this laptop-generated music effectually us, whether it'southward e-popular, EDM, even pop music — all the genres have been done with these computers — what was really lacking to united states is the soul that a musician player can bring. We took a totally unlike management than what is out in that location, I think, now, and we but got back to working with musicians. And some really good musicians that have experienced all the keen era of the '70s and '80s albums, all the big masterpieces we know. I recall we manage — I hope we manage to bring dorsum some soul and emotion.
So it's not the music of today or the music of the future or the past. Some people would retrieve that it's kind of retro to piece of work with these guys and to take this blazon of, like, disco or funk, but to me it'south but putting back some soul or some life in music.
BANGALTER: I didn't really say the music of today, rather than music we wanted to listen today. It's a very humbling position, and nosotros're not doing this in whatsoever kind of judgmental way based around what we would hear, you lot know?
Information technology's a very subjective, personal, instinctive approach equally musicians of proverb, "Nosotros don't want to supervene upon what's effectually; nosotros only want to widen the possibilities." There'southward a certain craftsmanship in recording music in studios that is gradually disappearing and nosotros thought that this was maybe a sad thing for this craftsmanship to disappear.
These techniques that take been developed over — maybe from the beginning of recorded sound in the tardily nineteenthursday Century for lx, lxx, lxxx years, until the meridian of the audio file quality in perhaps the mid '70s, early '80s — these techniques should not completely disappear. It was actually an homage to a certain craftsmanship that we felt was disappearing.
Are nosotros hearing some of this in a vocal like "Lose Yourself to Dance"? Does information technology accept that quality that you were looking for? A kind of warmth and a kind of pleasure principle?
BANGALTER: "Lose Yourself to Dance" is probably the simplest track from the production perspective on the tape, where it has the least amount of elements. But at the same fourth dimension, nosotros feel it has this quality we're looking for because there's not any electronic instruments in information technology or electronic drums. The only electronic chemical element is the robot phonation, which is a vocoder.
But the whole fantasy that nosotros had, and whole dream that we had, was could we notwithstanding practice, or can nosotros even so make, today, dance music without a pulsate motorcar?
We didn't actually know if it was possible. Just the idea of having John JR Robinson, which is ane of the best player, drummers in the earth — the most recorded drummer, I think, in pop music history — having him with his solid groove and with Nathan East, this amazing bass player so Nile on his guitar making magic and Pharrell singing and united states of america with the vocoders singing with him — information technology's a very simple layout, but it's extremely human.
That's what we were trying to create — dance music most created in an acoustic manner. Guy-Human being said it's all about having fun; music is about making you experience good. Information technology'southward as well about having a strong point of view and maybe making some kind of a statement, whatsoever the statement can be or will be.
We felt similar, by going this route and working with musicians and doing this thing acoustically and taking the time to record everything from scratch — not using whatever sound banks, whatsoever presets, whatever virtual instruments, using layers of claps and taking the time to record the claps for four minutes, or using a shaker and recording the shaker for four minutes and not relying on the technology of using these sound banks — it seemed that it was a statement that we're trying to practise in a very genuine way with a lot of enthusiasm and having fun.
The computers are maybe helping us and could do the music instead of us and nosotros can only become these over-writers, simply nosotros don't really feel that's where the fun is. The fun is by making the bodily music and not totally relying or relying primarily or heavily on engineering science. It has zero — again — nothing judgmental, simply for u.s.a. it was just more fun and more challenging to do information technology this way because it'southward really much more difficult.
You're talking then much well-nigh kind of putting the humanity back into this music, and at the aforementioned time a huge role of your persona is the idea of the robot. You guys are ever in public with the helmets so people don't know what you wait like; the use of the vocoders and the robo voices in the songs. It seems similar it'due south the opposite, actually, of what you're trying to do here.
BANGALTER: It is and information technology is not. The fiction and the story, it's about these robots. We directed an experimental movie about seven years ago, eight years ago that was called Electroma and that followed the story of these 2 robots which are in the desert that were somehow desperately trying to become human. And that's maybe what somehow is the story of this record, the story of these androids or these robots or these vocoder, robotic voices that are trying to feel an emotion. Or trying to have their robotic side going toward humanity in a globe where human beings are gradually going toward engineering and toward this idea of robots, you know?
Information technology's maybe something nosotros felt, which is we are two robots trying to become man. So it meets halfway; it has this kind of a cyborg and droid quality, only it seems that it's a story that has some emotion with it. Because it's almost artificial intelligence in some sense, simply it'south in the aforementioned style that if you take HAL, you lot know, in 2001 — an artificially intelligent entity that is very elegant and that maybe knows — is so intelligent that he knows that he's non a human being. Here it's not most the intelligence side of it, rather than emotional side of it. A robot that is sad because he cannot experience, or something like that. So it's virtually this paradox.
But it'south e'er been for u.s. about the interaction betwixt technology and humanity, and we couldn't accept done our project, definitely, without technology. As Guy-Homo said, nosotros are poor musicians in terms of performers.
We created the music initially with pulsate machines and samplers and taking trivial bits of pieces of records and just as well using synthesizers. What nosotros are are producers and songwriters. We're ever trying to have a sense for melody and harmony and things that we feel we're able to manage. Only on a production level, we totally, it's true, relied on technology. Information technology doesn't hateful that nosotros cannot at a certain time look at engineering and maybe not decide to glorify it.
We live and nosotros're totally fond and we're totally connected to technology ourselves, only we were interested in, again, sustaining a certain craftsmanship that was maybe existing before technology that we retrieve shouldn't completely disappear and has the correct to coexist with today's applied science.
And this coexistence and this thought of mixing both is what makes us excited virtually the future, about getting the best of both worlds and combining the superpowers of computer processors with ideas and real stuff and real things.
Electronic Music Artists From 2013 Recorded Album With Baby on Lap
Source: https://www.npr.org/2013/05/16/184499357/daft-punk-on-the-soul-that-a-musician-can-bring