Daft Punk: Human Touch

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  30 Jul 2013 in Interview

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Let’s play a game… we name one of your collaborators, and you elaborate on their contribution to the album…

… Nile Rodgers.
Guy-Man When I met Thomas, we were 12 and 13 years old, and Thomas was already a fan of Chic, and I was a fan of Chic, too. Maybe Nile being the first founding member of Chic, or common idol when we were teenagers, so we were listening to a lot of rock, a lot of different stuff, but funky music is one of our favourite style of music and Chic is the best most elegant funk band.  We met him briefly a few years ago and last year we really got in touch and started to propose him to work on our album. The craziest thing is that he has been a fan of us for years. I remember when Myspace just came up, he had this Myspace page, he requested us to be his friend, and had Daft Punk on his page. It was incredible to us. So we met him and started working on a song. It was just magic. He came into the studio, plugged in his guitar, and it was one of the most magical moments we experienced with him.  There are a lot of great incredible musicians, but there was a concentration of magic at one point when there were 3 of us in studio, we started playing, and after 1 or 2 minutes of getting into the groove, which is what he is all about. On all his tracks, if you listen to his interview, he is always talking about the groove, the land of the groove, that space where he locks the groove, and so he starts playing and after 2, 3 minutes, it’s like an alignment of planets or something. Everything clicks.  And then for one minute he was looking at us, jamming, he was like “You like it?” We were like children in front of a magician. All these guys are top-notch, all the players. The 3 drummers, Omar Hakim, Gerard Robinson or Queen, the bass players Nathan East, and James Genus the keyboard players, and everybody, the performers the singers, everybody is on top of his game.  We were very humbled, and fans of everybody, and it’s been an incredible experience with all of them, but Nile really nailed it in the studio. There was this small moment, 3 of us, we really… he opened the door playing guitar. We were in the crazy magical world for a few minutes.

… Pharrell.
G The first time he met us after doing the song, he came to Paris, he was really jetlagged and he listened to the track with Nile on it. So we sat down for a few minutes and he listened to it, and right away he went to the booth to record his vocals. We did the melodies and everything together and he came up with the words really fast, and he recorded it really fast, and then he says he forgot everything. And it’s just a few months later when he heard it back, he wasn’t remembering the song, the lyrics, and he was just really curious to see how it sounded. It’s funny because apparently he lost everything in his mind. It’s like something magical happened, he doesn’t remember anything. So when he listened to it he was blown away by himself, which is funny, and he doesn’t even know where it came from, what he channelled to write the lyrics and the way he sings [on the track] was very unusual for him. Personally I’m very happy because ‘Get Lucky’ or ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’ are, to me, is the pinnacle of what Pharrell can do. My favourite song that he produced and he sang on with Snoop was called ‘Beautiful’. It’s not just my favourite song by Pharrell, but it’s even one of my favourite songs ever, and I think we came close to having [those 2 songs] as good as ‘Beautiful’.

… Julian Casablancas.
G To me, in rock, The Strokes are the band that is above most of all other bands for the last 10 years, and we’ve been fans of the Strokes like crazy. We met Julian through a mutual friend and collaborator Warren Fu. Julian asked Warren if we were interested in meeting him and having a drink. We were like “Sureee!”So he came and we had this demo of ‘Instant Crush’. And right away, he got into it and next thing we knew we were working on the track – same thing as others. It’s a question of taste but the way he constructed his songs and everything, he’s crazy, he’s one of the best. So when we say we work with the people we love the most, it’s true, there are other ones that we love – but definitely Pharrell, Julian, and Nile – everybody is in their own category and their own style, they are the leaders, they are the bosses of what they are doing. 

… Panda Bear.
G He reached out to our management asking if it would be okay to remix one of his songs off Tomboy that he put out 2 years ago, and it’s been more than 10 years we decided that don’t do remixes anymore. However we love Tomboy and Animal Collective , so instead of answering the usual no, as in “No, we don’t do remixes,” we told them we are doing an album now, and it would be really crazy if Noah would be interested in singing on one of the tracks. Lo and behold, he was down for it. So we tried doing it in Paris, and the way he sings… I think we managed to capture the essence of the way he sings and the layering, different layers, and the way he harmonises and everything. I think in comparison to Animal Collective, which is full of different soundscapes and sounds, we managed to have some essence of what he does when he sings

… Giorgio Moroder.
G It was impressive to have worked with him. It was this table that we met him. He was sitting there. He reached out to our management, too, to have a drink and meet us. We were like crazy little kids, we met him and he was a cool guy; nice and humble. It’s crazy how all the collaborators were the same, they are so good that they become really humble, they don’t have to prove anything. Everything is really easy working with them. Giorgio was the most humble that he would pretend that he wasn’t responsible for everything that music was happening by itself. Our track with him was like a really epic track with different parts, it’s like a rollercoaster going through the time. It starts with him speaking about his life, his childhood, and you hear jazz-like background music that we recorded and everything, and then it moves to different parts that stick to his history, and also to the history of electronic music. It’s really funny to see that a man who is over 70 years old as the same man who invented electronic music 40 years ago.

He’s such an innovator and at the same time, it shows that he broke all the rules, and the weird thing, we’ve always been against hip music and electronic music on one side, and popular music that people think is not hip… You know what? That guy came from the most popular mainstream music in German pop, and he invented the most hipster music. And it shows that it’s the same person. You don’t have like ABBA on one side, and like Kraftwerk on the other, it was one thing at the time. Because it’s made of the same wood.

More on the duo at www.daftpunk.com.