Daft Punk: “Electronic Music Is In Its Comfort Zone”
In the interview with Rolling Stone, Daft Punk has slammed the current stage of Electronic Dance Music. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk said that “Electronic music right now is in its comfort zone and it’s not moving one inch. That’s not what artists are supposed to do.” He went on to say that when “you hear a song, whose track is it? There’s no signature.” While some may be offended by this, he also continued to say that “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.”
If you can remember back when Daft Punk first formed, Electronic Music was in a bit of a stand still as not much had changed in the industry in some time and part of their popularity was due to their originality.
The sit-down was actually the French duo’s first interview of the entire year, and the timing wasn’t an accident. It landed right as anticipation for their long-awaited album Random Access Memories was hitting a fever pitch, following those mysterious 15-second teaser clips that aired during Saturday Night Live and a wave of secrecy around the record that had fans and media outlets scrambling for scraps of information. Getting Daft Punk, a duo famous for guarding their privacy and rarely speaking to press at all, to open up about the state of the genre they helped build was a big deal on its own, regardless of what they actually said.
And what they said definitely got people talking. Coming from two guys who helped lay the groundwork for modern electronic and house music decades ago, calling out today’s scene for lacking a distinct signature sound is a pretty pointed critique, especially with EDM’s popularity exploding in the US at the time. It’s worth noting they didn’t lump everyone in together — singling out Skrillex as an example of someone who has actually carved out an identifiable sound suggests their issue isn’t with dance music itself, but with how much of it was starting to sound interchangeable as the genre went mainstream.
Whether you agreed with Bangalter’s take back in 2013 or not, it’s hard to argue that Daft Punk didn’t back up their words with action. Random Access Memories dropped a few weeks later, built almost entirely around live instrumentation, session musicians, and a disco-funk sound that stood in deliberate contrast to the EDM wave they were describing.
Would you agree that Electronic Music is in its comfort zone?
