In lieu of the unexpected announcement of Daft Punk’s breakup after 28 years of producing, remixing, DJing and trailblazing, I dug into the vault to share my interview with the group published in the April 2001 issue of Mixer.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Daft Punk twice as well as having them grace the cover of Big Shot during our print days.
Looking back on the interview, it’s heartening to see how they maintained such high standards for their work over subsequent releases and projects. Read on to learn the success of their first album, why it took so long to record their second LP and how they became robots.Continue Reading →
Famed French electronic music duo Daft Punk has packed it in after 28 years. A moment of silence, please.
The duo — Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo — made the announcement today via “Epilogue,” an eight-minute video posted on Youtube. The video is excerpted from their 2006 film, Electroma. The reason for the breakup is not yet known.
Over the past 28 years, Daft Punk rewrote the rules on what an electronic music band could do. With their helmets and space suits, they crafted wildly innovative electronic music across four acclaimed full-length albums: Homework (1997), Discovery (2001), Human After All (2005) and Random Access Memories (2013). The pair also scored the soundtrack to 2010’s Tron: Legacy.
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo collaborated with a host of artists, including Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Romanthony and Todd Edwards.
Daft Punk co-produced Kanye West‘s sixth studio album, Yeezus (2013). In 2016, Daft Punk gained their first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with the song “Starboy,” a collaboration with The Weeknd.
In 2003, they released the feature-length animated film, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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Milk & Sugar — the Munich-based DJ/producer house music duo comprised of Mike Kay and Steven Harding — recently dipped into their label’s catalog and asked Italian hotshots Brokenears to re-imagine their “House Dimension” track featuring Chicago house stalwart Ron Carroll on the mic. The original version of “House Dimensions” first appeared on 2017’s 20 Years Of Milk & Sugar. With the remix finally out and creating lots of buzz, we caught up with the twosome and asked them to share five tracks that are currently rocking their socially distanced world. Continue Reading →
You don’t need me to remind you how awful 2020 was from every possible vantage point. While musicians bore the brunt of the government-ordered shutdowns intended to stop the spread of COVID-19 that forced clubs and live music venues to close, fans supported their favorite acts by buying physical music by leaps and bounds.
According to a reportissued by the online music database Discogs, 16,290,197 pieces of physical music were sold worldwide in 2020. The result led to an overall 40.12 percent increase in year-over-year growth in global physical sales through the Discogs Marketplace.
The most popular physical music format sold in 2020 was vinyl.
Vinyl sales have once again crossed a landmark threshold: a stunning 11,961,998 records sold through the Discogs, up 40.75% from 2019. CDs have also increased 37.18% year-over-year with 3,441,769 compact discs purchased. Interest in cassettes hasn’t died down, with a total of 282,798 sold through the Marketplace, a 33.33% increase over 2019. These statistics and more are all included in the Discogs 2020 Report.
Likewise, Discogs says its platform saw sales of CDs increase 37.18 percent and purchases of cassettes increase ironically by 33.33 percent from 2019.
No paywalls, free to all. Help us remain 100% independent and unbiased. Please give to Big Shot by making a secure one-time donation to help us continue covering DJ culture and electronic music like we’ve done since 2003.
