ROBOT ROCK

The Vice magazine website just posted an audio interview with Daft Punk. You can listen to it here:

DAFT PUNK INTERVIEW

In this interview and another recent interview with Justice (in Fader or something, I forget), both bands mention the influence of Brian de Palma's 1974 film, Phantom of the Paradise, which came out a year before Rocky Horror Picture Show and occupies a lot of the same camp/musical aesthetic territory. Except Phantom is cooler. At the very least, because of this scene: I can't believe that when I first saw it I didn't immediately make the connection to Daft Punk..



The synthesizer that occupies the entire recording room is TONTO, which was also used heavily during the recording of Stevie Wonder's Innervisions. Here's a documentary clip on the making of that album, focusing on the use of TONTO.


And there is a second subterranean Stevie Wonder - Daft Punk connection. In the video for Part-Time Lover, Stevie performs inside a neon pyramid. For real.



Along these lines, here are two additional clips featuring old synthesizers and recording techniques. One is a promo clip for Giorgio Moroder's E=MC2 record (the first album recorded digital), and a pretty strange promo clip for the Mellotron, which turns out was not invented by eccentric drug users, but posh, bow-tie wearing upper class Brits. The footage of the dude using the Mellotron to produce country club waltz music is kind of mesmerizing.

Giorgio:



Upper-class Mellotron: