Trivia / Daft Punk

• Discovery
• Random Access Memories

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• Acting in the Dark: Giorgio Moroder wasn't allowed to listen to "Giorgio by Moroder" while recording his monologue for the track, and didn't get to hear it until seven or eight months afterwards.
• All-Star Cast: The guest performers on Random Access Memories. Including Nile Rodgers (of Chic fame), Paul Williams, Giorgio Moroder, Chilly Gonzales, Pharrell, Todd Edwards, DJ Falcon, Panda Bear and Julian Casablancas. Not to mention the session musicians that list such classics as Thriller and Off the Wall on their resumes. At the Grammys, Stevie Wonder himself pitched in for a keyboard role and singing for part of the song in a modified version of "Get Lucky" alongside Nile and Pharrell.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The article quote about the duo's previous band in which the duo decided to use as a name for, wasn't "a bunch of daft punk", but "a daft punky thrash". And this quote in question uses the word "thrash", not "trash". And the article talks about the songs, not the band itself.
• Career Resurrection: Following the lukewarm reception to Human After All, a lot of critics and fans were asking if this was the beginning of the end for the duo. All those questions stopped after their performance at Coachella.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Japanese
    • Alive 2007 -> ピラミッド大作戦 (Battle of the Pyramid)
• Creator Backlash:
  • The duo doesn't appear to look back on their remixes for other artists very fondly, as they ceased doing them after releasing their take on Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" in 2004.
  • Two years after Daft Punk's retirement, Thomas Bangalter admitted that he no longer enjoys his robot persona created as part of the group, as the rise of artificial intelligence in the modern world made him far more frightened of the relationship between humanity and machines. While he still loves his "character" and the themes explored as part of the music, Bangalter indicated that he has little interest in returning to his old alter ego.
• Enforced Method Acting: Or in this case, Enforced Method Recording. While recording Giorgio Moroder's story for "Giorgio by Moroder", Giorgio spoke into three different microphones that each represented the forties/fifties, sixties/seventies, and the present day/future. The sound engineer was adamant that while most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between each microphone, Thomas and Guy-Manuel could.
• Executive Meddling: It's widely believed that Hans Zimmer was brought in by Disney to "touch up" their soundtrack to TRON: Legacy, despite being uncredited in both film and soundtrack album.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Daft Punk fans refer to themselves as Dafters.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: "Music Sounds Better With You", the only song from Bangalter's one-time side project Stardust, fell into this for a long time. Despite the song being a massive hit internationally (indeed, the song charted higher than most of Daft Punk's singles), the full song took until 2019 to get a digital release, alongside a repressing of the twelve-inch single.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: The duo consider Human After All to be their best album. Quite a few fans disagree, as they find many of the album's tracks as overly repetitive and having little substance outside of a few cuts.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Happens a lot with their collaborators on Random Access Memories.
    • Giorgio Moroder, who is primarily known for his disco work in the 70s, steps up to the microphone to do a spoken-word monologue about his life for "Giorgio by Moroder".
    • Julian Casablancas steps out of his alt-rock comfort zone that he's used to as the frontman for The Strokes to create a very slow and relaxed, but melancholic electronic in "Instant Crush" that incorporates gratuitous use of autotuned vocals and a short guitar solo.
    • Panda Bear's feature on "Doin' It Right" is a far cry from his work with Animal Collective, being a rather simplistic electronic pop track.
  • For the duo themselves, Daft Punk ended up producing four tracks on Kanye West's sixth album Yeezus, all of which are hard-hitting hip-hop beats that contrast greatly with their own work.
• Promoted Fanboys:
  • Both Thomas and Guy-Manuel were big fans of Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock as children. They got to work with Matsumoto in making Interstella 5555.
  • They were also very big fans of TRON as well, and spent much of their interview with Disney asking, in effect, "Will this be done right?"
  • One of the duo's biggest formative experiences as teenagers was Phantom of the Paradise, which they saw over 20 times together in the theater (and the influence of which can be seen in their helmets and stage personas). Over 35 years later, they were introduced to Paul Williams himself via a sound engineer and mutual acquaintance, and they finally got to collaborate on Random Access Memories.
  • Todd Edwards is listed as one of Daft Punk's inspirations in their song "Teachers", amongst other Chicago house DJs. Edwards would later co-produce and sing on both "Face to Face" and "Fragments of Time".
  • Panda Bear was a big fan of Homework, as he bonded with his brother while listening to it in his early life. He later got to provide vocals for "Doin' it Right".
• Prop Recycling: The animatronic puppet used in the clip "Technologic" is Chucky's skeleton from Seed of Chucky.
• Reclusive Artist: Appearance-wise, at least. Although photos of their faces very early on in their career do indeed exist, most of the time, they always cover up their faces with something, usually their iconic robot helmets. The band have also gone on record saying that they use the robot image to keep their Daft Punk and personal lives separated. Between the two of them, Guy-Manuel is significantly more shy than Thomas, as he rarely speaks during interviews.
• Recycled Set: The set that Daft Punk used for their Random Access Memories unboxing was later used again by Sony in their PS4 unboxing.
• Referenced by... Clash of Clans, in its description of the Laboratory building:
  ...All we know is that their [Alchemists'] research makes our spells and troops harder, better, faster and stronger!
• Refitted for Sequel: "Black Skinhead" was made up of old drum beats and samples that were scrapped from Random Access Memories, before it was given to Kanye West to use.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Giorgio Moroder admitted that his son being a big fan of Daft Punk had a factor in him deciding to collaborate with the duo for Random Access Memories.
• Streisand Effect:
  • A picture of Daft Punk (without their helmets) playing "champagne beer pong" was posted and was spread despite their wishes.
  • Pictures and fan art of the duo without their helmets also seems to be a common fixture in the online (re: Tumblr) fandom, despite this seeming to go against what Daft Punk want.
• What Could Have Been:
  • It's been largely rumored that they were working on a fifth studio album in late 2019, and leaked papers of producing transcripts in early 2020 confirmed that. Sadly, it was reported in late 2020 that the COVID-19 Pandemic caused them to lose interest in recording, and they split in February 2021 due to wanting to go in different directions creatively.
  • Guy-Manuel wanted "Giorgio by Moroder" to be 15 minutes long and for Random Access Memories to be a triple-disc release on vinyl format.
  • Giorgio Moroder was interesting in providing his own production to "Giorgio by Moroder" when he was contacted by Daft Punk to be a part of it, but the duo was merely interested in recording his life story monologue.
  • Julian Casablancas had tried to do another collaboration with Daft Punk shortly before their breakup in 2021, but ultimately didn't end up doing anything due to their elusive nature.
  • Earlier in both bands' careers, Panda Bear reached out to the duo a few times to see if they could make a remix for an Animal Collective song. They ultimately refused due to having given up remixing a long time ago, but their correspondence did lead to their collaboration on "Doin' It Right".

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