‘Human after all’? Daft punk and the cult of the machine

Abstract

Daft Punk is a duo formed in the 1990s and widely recognized in the next decade. They are considered by many as innovator and display themselves a musical experimentation discourse. Their most recent album (Random Access memories), released in 2013, was a public and critical success and was awarded – among four other categories – Best Album of 2013 in the 2014 Grammy Award. What Daft Punk really brings as innovation is the abolition of the human figure, which can be accomplished either by having robots rather than humans as frontmen or by using mechanical voices instead of a human one. By abolishing the human figure and fantasizing that the music is being done by machines, the band achieves a definitive representation of the mechanicist dream of the 20th century, announced for the first time by the Futurist school.