“We don’t want to make music that is considered just a revival…” Check out this interview with Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo from 2001
Today, 3 January, marks the 45th birthday of Thomas Bangalter, one half of Daft Punk, and one of the most enigmatic figures in electronic music.
That seven years have now passed since 2013’s Random Access Memories, the duo’s last long player (a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed among Daft Punk fans), doesn’t mean that Bangalter has shied away from the studio – he co-produced several tracks on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, as well as working alongside French singer songwriter -M-, and has also offered up occasional soundtrack work.
Back in 2001, however, Bangalter and compatriot Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo were at the top of their game, with the release of their second album, Discovery – still held up as a masterpiece of the French touch era.
In May of that year, they spoke to Remix magazine‘s Chris Gill about their plans for the future, the inspiration behind some of the stand out tracks on Discovery, the art of sampling, and their love for 1980s synthesisers.
As Bangalter explained, the aim of Discovery was to take a “playful, fun, and colorful look at music”, creating something honest and open, almost like through a child’s eyes.
“Electronic and house music has shown how it’s possible to destroy the old rules, so it comes from an open-minded approach in the first place,” he said.
“But it has started to set its own new rules. We wanted to destroy the new rules that define house music today by doing something that is more in the house music spirit rather than the house music style. The spirit of house music is about questioning yourself and trying different things. Electronic music is about creating exciting new sounds.
“A lot of house music today just uses samples from disco records of the ’70s and ’80s. In some respects, house music is a revival of that style. We don’t want to make music that is considered just a revival. While we might have some disco influences, we decided to go further and bring in all the elements of music that we liked as children, whether it’s disco, electro, heavy metal, rock, or classical.”
You can read the full interview here, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Happy birthday Thomas Bangalter! 🙂
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