Thomas Bangalter publicly spoken on the reason behind the split of Daft Punk, his musical duo with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for almost 30 years.
Speaking to the BBC, Bangalter revealed that the increasing intersection between humans and technology was the reason behind Daft Punk’s demise, and that the core of the duo was that there should be a clear separation between the two. “Daft Punk was a project that blurred the line between reality and fiction with these robot characters. It was a very important point for me and Guy-Man[uel] to not spoil the narrative while it was happening,” he said. “It was an exploration, I would say, starting with the machines and going away from them. I love technology as a tool [but] I’m somehow terrified of the nature of the relationship between the machines and ourselves.”
He also shared his concerns about the growing use of artificial intelligence and how it could “go beyond its use in music creation.” Bangalter shared, “2001: A Space Odyssey is maybe my favourite film and the way [Stanley] Kubrick presented it is so relevant today – because he is asking exactly the question that we have to ask ourselves about technology and the obsolescence of man.”
“We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can. We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology,” he further stated. “As much as I love this character, the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot.”
Elsewhere in music, KAYTRANADA and Aminé have a collaborative project on the way.
