“I’m relieved to look back and say ‘Okay, we didn’t mess up too much’”: Thomas Bangalter on the end of Daft Punk
He explains that it “felt good” to end the project after almost three decades
Credit: Dan MacMedan/WireImage
Thomas Bangalter has discussed the end of Daft Punk in a new interview with BBC Radio 6.
The musician and producer, who formed the iconic duo in 1993 with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, says that it “felt good” to end the project in 2021, revealing that he asks himself why they ended it more often than he asks himself how it lasted for so long.
“It’s a lot like a story or mini saga,” he explained. “Sometimes there’s a TV show that has a special place in people’s heart and it keeps that place, and it runs for one, two, three, four, five, sometimes 10 seasons.”
“There’s a moment where it ends and I think it’s actually interesting to have this opportunity to start, have the middle and to end it.”
He explains that they started the project when he was 18, and it carried through until he was 46 – he described it as a “significant part” of his life.
“I’m relieved and happy to look back on it and say ‘Okay, we didn’t mess it up too much’,” he adds. “It’s a lot of discipline and effort – same thing with the characters, with everything, so it definitely felt good.”
As for the duo’s famous helmets, Bangalter – who has recently entered the world of classical music – explains that “You have an idea like that when you’re like 25, you don’t say ‘You know what, we’re just going to build robot masks and dress up like robots until the day we die.’”
He also looked back on their first live show, during which they were “terrified”, with Guy-Man spending almost half of the show hiding under the table: “It was just me with him, but him adjusting the buttons and the machines from below like that.”
Guy-Manuel may still be active in music, too. He’s been credited as a producer and writer in Travis Scott’s new album, Utopia, although fans have noted that his input could be an old, unreleased beat from the duo’s work on Kanye West’s 2013 album, Yeezus.
There’s plenty of Daft Punk sounds to explore, though. Just last month, longtime collaborator Todd Edwards revealed the samples used on the 2001 track Face To Face, which featured on the robots’ seminal 2001 album Discovery. Edwards shared the samples following a fan-made video that reconstructed the track using the original samples – which fans have been tracking down for over 20 years.
