Daft Punk Broke Up
After 28 years together, French electronic music duo Daft Punk is no more. Repose En Paix. The Daft Punk helmet guys (human names: Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) announced their split in an ~avant-garde~8-minute film entitled Epilogue. Their publicist, Kathryn Frazier, officially confirmed the split to Variety. She gave no further details. Très mystérieux!
Here’s their break-up video. And, yes, you can watch this shit at 2x the speed. That’s what I did:
But if doubling the speed was still too long for you, here’s a summary: the Daft Punks are walking together in the desert. The one in the silver helmet starts to hang behind, and Gold Helmet Guy goes on ahead. Once he notices his silver friend is no longer beside him, he walks back to his buddy. They stare at each other. For a while. It’s *art*. Then the Silver Lagger takes his jacket off, turns around, and presents his back to Goldie, revealing two buttons and a lever. Goldie pauses (again, for a very long time), and eventually pulls the lever. He walks away. There’s a beeping and a countdown. Then Silver explodes. The duo’s 2013 song “Touch” plays. The screen cuts to black. This image pops up:
Fade to black. Then two whole minutes of sunset footage. I’m sure my Experimental Film professor from college would have loved this video as much as he hated me (I have a disorder where I must constantly roll my eyes and loudly snort at pretentious bullshit).
I was surprised that Daft Punk had been around as far back as 1993. Apparently, Guy-Manuel and Thomas met in the mid-80s in Paris as teenagers. They started a rock band called Darlin’, and their first song received a bad review. The critic described it as “a daft punky thrash”, and Daft Punk was born. Their 1996 debut album, Homework, catapulted them to international stardom. A couple of years later they made up a story about being injured in an explosion and began wearing those robot helmets in public.
The duo’s most famous songs include “Da Funk”, “Around the World”, “Digital Love”, “Harder Better, Faster, Stronger”, “Something About Us”, “One More Time”, “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself To Dance” (which were 2013 collabs with Pharrell), and a bunch more. In 2016 they collaborated with The Weeknd on the songs “Starboy” and “I Feel It Coming” (voted by me as the sexiest song to ever exist). There were rumors that the duo might perform with The Weeknd at the Super Bowl, but that didn’t happen.
Variety says that based on the duo’s “contrarian and convention-mocking history”, this announcement could actually mean the beginning of a new project. But if this was just a good old-fashioned band break-up, I don’t think any of this was necessary. No one would have known if one of the dudes quit and they got someone new to wear the robot helmet. Match his height, weight, build, and Bob’s your uncle! Hell, as far as we know, the current Daft Punkers aren’t even the original Daft Punkers. Maybe they’re like classroom hamsters… they keep dying and being replaced by doppelgängers.
Pic: Wenn.com