Thomas Bangalter
Computers were never designed in the first place to become musical instruments. Within a computer, everything is sterile - there's no sound, there's no air. It's totally code. Like with computer-generated effects in movies, you can create wonders. But it's really hard to create emotion.Collection: Movies
Initially, electronic music was anti-establishment, as punk rock and rock n' roll were. The music was shut down; the police were against the parties.Collection: Music
The spirit of house music, electronic music, in the beginning was to break the rules, to do things in many different ways.Collection: Music
Usually, a band 20 years into its existence doesn't put out its best records.
It's a very subjective, personal, instinctive approach as musicians of saying, 'We don't want to replace what's around; we just want to widen the possibilities.'
A cello was there 400 years ago and will still be here in 400 years.
There's something in human performance that is very smooth and very fluid, and at the same time it can be very precise, and that can take a lot of time, trial and error.
Artists are overcompensating with this aggressive, energetic, hyperstimulating music - it's like someone shaking you. But it can't move people on an emotional level.
The late '70's and early '80s is the zenith of a certain craftsmanship in sound recording.
Music was a vector that we wanted to build a universe around.
The only secret to being in control is to have it in the beginning. Retaining control is still hard, but obtaining control is virtually impossible.
Everyone making electronic music has the same tool kits and templates. You listen, and you feel like it can be done on an iPad. If everybody knows all the tricks, it's no more magic.
There have been movies like 'Paranormal Activity' or 'Blair Witch Project' in Hollywood that showed you could do movies with little or no money. It doesn't prevent them from creating larger than life spectacles as well.
There's a confusion sometimes with the laptop being the current tools and where electronic music initially comes from.
It's really interesting to just look at the career of a musician and a producer that went into many different genres and many different styles and many different places but always breaking the barriers between genres and at some point reinventing himself all along the way but also inventing things at the same time.
When you look at what we can call the golden era of concept albums, which starts in the mid or late '60s and ends maybe in the early '80s, it's an interesting time for music. You see all these very established and popular acts and bands and artists that were somehow on the top of their game but really trying to experiment.
I remember when I was a kid, I would watch 'Superman', and I was super into the feeling of knowing that Clark Kent is Superman and no one knows.
In 'Scream 2', they have this discussion about how sequels always suck.
In the history of pop music, a lot of great records cost an enormous amount of money. There used to be a time where people that had means to experiment would do it, you know?
Technology has made music accessible in a philosophically interesting way, which is great. But on the other hand, when everybody has the ability to make magic, it's like there's no more magic - if the audience can just do it themselves, why are they going to bother?
It's very strange how electronic music formatted itself and forgot that its roots are about the surprise, freedom, and the acceptance of every race, gender, and style of music into this big party. Instead, it started to become this electronic lifestyle which also involved the glorification of technology.
Usually, the 24-hour, high-maintenance celebrity lifestyle can disconnect people from reality.
When you look at C-3PO and Darth Vader and then look at the actors behind them, you can't really make the connection. It kills the magic.
Skrillex has been successful because he has a recognizable sound: You hear a dubstep song: even if it's not him, you think it's him.
'SNL' is this part of American culture with a certain timelessness to it.
Synths are a very low level of artificial intelligence. Whereas you have a Stradivarius that will live for a thousand years.
There was a naive quality in 1982 around technology and the start of video games. And that's like the start of electronic music - there was this statement and, ideologically, these things to fight for.
Daft Punk would not exist if there was no technology.
Electronic music has definitely taken over America. There is more and more interaction with hip hop.
Technology is an interesting subject, people thinking: how much good, and how much bad, does it inherently carry?
I think 'Tron' is a good example of minimalism.
Music was segregated in the '80s, and then in the '90s the boundaries started to break down, and rock kids got into electronic music. But then you got this reverse snobbery where people would only listen to electronic music and not rock.
Technology is fascinating.
The concept of the robot encapsulates both aspects of technology. On one hand it's cool, it's fun, it's healthy, it's sexy, it's stylish. On the other hand it's terrifying, it's alienating, it's addictive, and it's scary. That has been the subject of much science-fiction literature.
Electronic music right now is in its comfort zone, and it's not moving one inch.Collection: Moving
If everybody knows all the tricks, it's no more magic.Collection: Magic
You never know whether something will be good.Collection: Be Good
It's nice to be able to forget.Collection: Nice
We like the idea that the things we do seem to come out of nowhere.Collection: Ideas
We come from a generation that wanted to make electronic music accepted, at a time [when] it was not.Collection: Generations
It’s always this thing where we’re constantly waiting for something that will come in electronic music that says, ‘Daft Punk sucks!’ That’s actually much more interesting and exciting than someone who is paying homage.Collection: Interesting
The place of electronic music, culturally and socially, is today completely different - it is now everywhere, and it has been totally accepted. Consequently, there is now a younger generation that is more focused on making great electronic music, good parties, and having fun, where there is not any more so much need for cultural and ideological statements in electronic music itself.Collection: Fun
We have always been thinking about different ways to perform electronic music, i.e. music made with machines.Collection: Thinking
The show, like everything we have done and still do, is just one more experiment.Collection: Done
There is indeed a level of improvisation where we can distort and shuffle the music patterns, samples, and loops in each phase of the show within fixed cue points, but at the same time there is a constant result that we are trying to achieve each night while performing and operating our system - quite similar in spirit to a broadway show for example: If you go see a musical two nights in a row, the performances are different yet similar.Collection: Night
Being nationalistic in France has nothing in common with being patriotic in America.Collection: Patriotic
We're genuinely happy if some musicians of this younger generation are influenced by our music, as we were ourselves influenced 10 years ago by older musicians.Collection: Years
I am definitely pro-European, even pro-global, and house music and electronic music has developed a network all over the world, between record shops in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Chicago, Minneapolis and L.A. That's really what I feel part of, rather than being French.Collection: House
We feel like we're building something aesthetically, so we like the idea of the evolution. So far, each piece of music or everything has been to expand it, instead of backtracking or trying to destroy what we have done.Collection: Trying