YES! French EDM duo DAFT PUNK broke up! It is a sad day, the masked and highly influential duo has announced its retirement in an announcement as enigmatic as the rest of the pair’s three-decade career.

Daft Punk

Daft Punk was a French electronic music duo formed in 1993 in Paris by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. The duo garnered attention and popularity in the late 1990s as part of the French house movement; they also had success in the years following, combining elements of house-music with funk, techno, disco, rock, and synthpop.

They are regarded as one of the most influential musicians in dance music history. Daft Punk wore ornate helmets and gloves to assume robot personas in most public appearances since 1990 and rarely granted interviews or appeared on television. They were managed from 1996 to 2008 by Pedro Winter (also known as Busy P), the head of Ed Banger Records.

After Bangalter and Homem-Christo’s indie rock band gang Darlin’ disbanded, they started exploring different avenues with drum machines and synthesizers. Their introduction studio collection Homework was delivered by Virgin Records in 1997 to positive surveys, and was sponsored by singles “Around the globe” and “Da Funk”. Their second collection, Discovery, had further achievement, upheld by hit singles “Once again”, “Computerized Love” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. In March 2005, Daft Punk delivered their third collection, Human After All, to blended audits, however, the singles “Robot Rock” and “Technologic” made progress in the United Kingdom. Daft Punk visited all through 2006 and 2007 and delivered the live collection Alive 2007, which won a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. They formed the score for the film Tron: Legacy, which was delivered in 2010 close by its soundtrack collection.

In 2013, Daft Punk left Virgin for Columbia Records, and released their fourth album, Random Access Memories, to acclaim; lead single “Get Lucky” reached the top 10 in the charts of 32 countries. Random Access Memories won five Grammy Awards in 2014, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Get Lucky”. In 2016, Daft Punk gained their first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with the song “Starboy,” in collaboration with The Weeknd. Rolling Stone ranked them No. 12 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.

Daft Punk maintaining class through music

The duo has a “general rule about not appearing in videos.” Although Daft Punk rarely grants interviews, Bangalter is cited as being the more talkative and opinionated one of the duo. With regard to fame and stardom, he said,

“We don’t believe in the star system. We want the focus to be on the music. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. It is not a compromise. We’re trying to separate the private side and the public side. It’s just that we’re a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. We don’t want to play this star system thing. We don’t want to get recognized in the streets. Yes. Everyone has accepted us using masks in photos so far, which makes us happy. Maybe sometimes people are a little bit disappointed but that’s the only way we want to do it. We think music is the most personal thing we can give. The rest is just about people taking themselves seriously, which is all very boring sometimes.”

Daft Punk Last Music Video Epilogue

In a sharp, new eight-minute video called “Epilogue,” posted yesterday, the duo [Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo] maintaining their robot/racing personas, walk toward one another through a purple-sky desert. After standing helmet-to-helmet for a bit, sharing a sad kind of emotion with their silence, one pushes a button on the other’s power pack, setting off a countdown alarm. They separate and prepare for self-destruction. The dates “1993-2021” then appear giving off a sad vibe and definite goose-bumps, with fading lines ‘if love is the answer, you’re home.’

Now that’s a goodbye, that too in style!

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