Apparently the Centre Pompidou in Paris is where one of Daft Punk’s two robot-role-playing heroes fell in love with electronic music—and he kept the affair alive with a surprise DJ set for a music festival staged after the museum recently closed for five years of renovation.
As part of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter helped put the banging, biting “French house” sound on the on the international dance-music map. And he broke his spell of relative reclusivity with his first proper DJ set in 16 years (and his first without hiding his face within a robot helmet in 24).
In an Instagram post, the artist known as Fred again… (who was part of the same festival lineup at the Pompidou) wrote, “Thomas told me in this lift on the way down to the show that the first time he fell in love with electronic music was in this building in 1992. He also told me hasn’t played a proper set without the mask on for 24 years. I didn’t know what to say to either of those things and I still don’t.”
Daft Punk (which consists of Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) hasn’t released an album since Random Access Memories in 2013 and remains the source of serious pining among fans of their studious and sophisticated sound, which merges reverence for the past with yearnings for the future. The partial resurrection was part of the Because Beaubourg, a two-day festival organized by the Parisian record label Because Music. As noted by Stereogum, Bangalter played Daft Punk classics among other selections including music from Jonny Greenwood’s score for the Paul Thomas Anderson–directed movie One Battle After Another. Other acts in the festival lineup included Fred again… (an acolyte of Brian Eno) and Pedro Winter (Busy P) DJing back-to-back with Erol Alkan.
Last week, the closing festivities for the Pompidou included a fireworks show by Cai Guo-Qiang activated in and around the museum’s façade.
