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DAFT PUNK LIVESTREAM: Exactly a year after French duo Daft Punk shocked fans by announcing an unceremonious split, they returned to social media and hosted a one-day-only live stream of a 1997 show on live-streaming service Twitch.
The era-defining dancefloor act began the live stream at 2.22pm Pacific time on Tuesday (6.22am yesterday, Singapore time), sharing rare footage from their Dec 12, 1997 show in Los Angeles sans their iconic helmets.
Daft Punk also released a deluxe anniversary edition of their debut album Homework, which came out 25 years ago. From Da Funk in 1995 to Get Lucky in 2013, they became the torch-bearers for French house music across the globe, winning six Grammy Awards and pioneering the sound-and-light shows that came to characterise the electronic dance movement (EDM) of recent years.
They did so while almost never revealing their faces: the ubiquitous helmets became another much-copied trope of EDM stars, but also afforded Thomas Bangalter, 47, and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, 48, freedom from the fame that quickly encircled them.
The duo met at school in Paris before an inauspicious start in music with the rock band Darlin'.
One review in the British music press dismissed the band as "daft punky thrash" - which struck a chord with them. Re-emerging as an electronic outfit, they met with instant success.
Early singles Da Funk and Around The World became club fixtures and led to massive sales for the album Homework in 1997.
It was in the Around The World video that they first donned the helmets that would become their signature look. It mirrored the tight control they exercised over their career, which included ownership of their master recordings.
They followed up with the even more successful Discovery in 2001, which spawned the hits One More Time and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
Their fourth and last album, Random Access Memories (2013), was a phenomenal success, winning them four Grammys the following year, including best record for Get Lucky, the millions-selling lead single featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers.
