The defunct French electro house band may be coming back...
ADVERTISEMENTBetween 1997 and 2013, the famous robotic duo – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – released four albums. Seven if you count the 2010 Tron: Legacy soundtrack and both 1997 and 2007 live albums. Their Grammy-winning album 'Random Access Memories' ('RAM') was followed by their break up in 2021.
Now, one of Daft Punk’s collaborators during the 'RAM' sessions has confirmed rumours that a recorded and shelved album in 2018 would have been the follow up to what was their final 2013 project.
There’s even some chance that the lost album will come out.
In a recent video interview with student-run media organization alt.news 26:46, the band’s drummer mononymously known as Quinn, who performed on the majority of the tracks on 'RAM', talked about working with Daft Punk.
He mentioned spending “four, five days at Henson studios” with the French duo around 2018.
He said that the unreleased record includes some of his best work, and went on to talk about the possibility of its release: “I keep checking in. I’m told they’re working on it. It’s coming out of the locker. I asked Daft Punk permission to talk about it for another article, ’cause they’re very secretive as you know. And the greatest guys.”
Quinn mentioned he was “the first person, the very first person” called in to work on this lost Daft Punk album, and that Thomas Bangalter was “just experimenting.”
“That unnamed record, I think will be a lot of spontaneous things,” he said. “I remember playing this one thing - my piano board, the insides of a piano - I put my kick pedal on the strings and played it like a kick drum. I remember those guys really loving that. I don’t know if it’ll make the record. It was the craziest, weird-sounding things.”
Quinn also claimed that he recorded “more normal drums - a little bit more disco, tighter drums.”
Check out the interview below:
To be continued... But don’t expect the band to reform anytime soon.
There have been theories that Daft Punk would make a comeback for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games held in Paris this July and August. These were promptly shut down.
The band members seem content having put an end to the Daft Punk era: “When we started I was 18 and when we ended Daft Punk I was 46,” Bangalter said in an August 2023 interview. “I am relieved and happy to look back on it and say ‘OK, we didn’t mess it up too much.'”
Last April, Bangalter released a solo orchestral album called 'Mythologies', which was a complete pivot compared to the band’s signature sound, but well worth listening to.
In our review, we said that 'Mythologies' ended up sounding like "the Baroque lovechild of Vivaldi and Philip Glass, and it’s… Well, it’s sublime."
It was far more interesting than the stripped down, drumless 'RAM' re-release Daft Punk put out in November 2023 to celebrate the album's tenth anniversary – a complete waste of time that drains the energy of the original album.
That said, apparently Quinn didn’t feel too insulted by the drumless version. So that’s something.
Bangalter was also recently announced as the composer of the DAAAAAALÍ film soundtrack. The film screened at the Venice Film Festival last year, and the soudtrack will be released on Ed Banger Records.
