#DAFT PUNK ALIVE TOUR 2006 TV#

We are two robots in this pyramid with this light show, but everything is for you to have fun and enjoy yourself.' He's absolutely right about the 'have fun and enjoy yourself' bit, but the Alive tour separated itself from the millions of DJ parties before it by drawing attention to a fixed point while incorporating everything from KISS-esque pomp to Space Invaders retro-future shock. It's more like a rave party where the DJ isn't important. Talking about the relationship between artist and audience, Bangalter told Paper, 'Robots don't make people feel like there's an idol on stage. Even without video, Alive 2007 is an exercise in exacting excess, from the blaring 'Robot Rock' intro to a wide-eyed power-booster of a encore that layers 'One More Time' atop 'Music Sounds Better With You'- a combination so 'holy shit' ecstatic it would seem downright cocky if it wasn't so blissful. Wisely, the duo also know when to let the bass be, allowing large portions of unfuckwithable classics like 'Da Funk' and 'Burnin'' to work their magic with little robo-meddling. Meanwhile, the creepy hiss of 'Steam Machine' is atomized and given space-age dynamics, turning it from a oddball bore into a fist-pumping celebration of the industrial age.

#DAFT PUNK ALIVE TOUR 2006 TV#

The titular refrains of 'Television Rules the Nation' and 'Around the World' combine to form the globe's most dance-friendly TV station theme song before the Black Sabbath crunch of 'Television' is sent down upon the impossibly buoyant 'Crescendolls', resulting in the disc's most unlikely-yet-spectacular roller coaster peak. Instead, well-worn favorites are glued together, cut-up and mashed into pieces. The live set doesn't simply run through the hits, mindlessly segueing from one smash to another. One of the most remarkable aspects of Alive 2007 is how well it recontextualizes career nadir Human After All, turning previously leaden songs into ebullient rock'n'roll manifestos injected with Homework's air-tight Moroder-style anthems or Discovery's flamboyant funk, Human After All tracks are constantly improved and born anew. With a bounty of latent good will on their side thanks to the incredible re-playability of their first two albums, Daft Punk finally gave fans a million flashing reasons to fall in love with them all over again. 1 hip-hop songs, filling magazine spreads, spawning worthy would-be successors and, of course, owning the internet (on Flickr, Daft Punk photos currently outnumber Justin Timberlake snaps 2:1). And now, they're everywhere (except Gap ads, thankfully)- getting sampled on no. But then, amped-up with enough electricity to illuminate a black hole, French house's masked men upstaged Madonna, previous electronic pioneers Depeche Mode, and (ironically) Kanye West at 2006's Coachella. After the shattering pop breakthrough of 2001's Discovery, Daft Punk were going through an especially angsty adolescence- their spit-shined heads way up their own asses. And early screenings of their art-house opus, Electroma, evoked (unfortunately accurate) comparisons to Vincent Gallo's on-the-road/oral sex epic Brown Bunny (except with endless scenes of hunk-o-metal ennui filling in for the graphic oral sex).

The monster riffage and mind-numbing gloom of 2005's Human After All had our favorite party-starters turning downright nihilistic. Lest we forget, before the out-of-nowhere debut of the now-iconic 3D triangle in April 2006, it seemed like Daft Punk lost the plot. Playing like a flawlessly sequenced and paced greatest hits album, this full-set Paris recording from June finds Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo connecting the booms among their three albums while officially cementing one of the year's most rewarding and welcomed comebacks. But still, even the most hectic web clip can't equal the French duo's visceral sound-and-vision assault, so the focus of Alive 2007 falls on the reason why Daft Punk were allowed to lug 11 tons of equipment around the world for the last 19 months in the first place: their music. Commenting on the decision, Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter recently told Pitchfork, 'The thousands of clips on the internet are better to us than any DVD that could have been released.' And, in many ways, the Alive tour is a perfect match for YouTube- the ancient Egypt by-way-of 'The Jetsons' spectacle barrelling its way through shitty compression quality with blinding force.

Daft punk alive tour 2006