Daft Punk revealed its “Alive” tour stage set-up at the 2006 Coachella Music and Arts Festival. A giant pyramid took center stage, flanked with LCD screens on the sides. Perched atop it were Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, dressed in robot helmets and gloves and leather jackets that had “Daft Punk” scrolled over the back. From atop their futuristic shrine, they played interstellar DJ’s to crowds the world over.
Once the tour ended, many had hopes for a live DVD that captured the spectacle, whether to relive the moment or to get a glimpse of something they didn’t get the chance to see. It was soon revealed that there would be no DVD, but rather a live CD documenting a show in Paris in June of this year. A live disc from an electronic band? How could that possibly be any different from one of their studio albums?
It turns out the answer to that question is: very different. Alive 2007 transcends each of the three studio albums Daft Punk has put out in their 10 year career. The French duo could have easily come on stage in their Battlestar Galactica meets Hell’s Angels get-up and dished out the songs exactly the way they appeared on those albums. Instead, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo, with the help of a customized super-computer, decided to remix their own material, and do it live.
The album opens with a mashup between “Robot Rock” and “Oh Yeah”, tracks off their third and first albums, respectively. The words “human” and “robot” are alternately spoken by a voice that sounds like a robot speaking into a voice box.
Then come the stomping guitars and crashing drums. The best dance-party-on-a -disc to come out all year has just begun. From there, the duo go crashing into songs from throughout their careers, mixing songs that seemingly wouldn’t fit together into perfect remixes of each other. Recent hit “Technologic” gets mixed with the Busta Rhymes single “Touch It,” which, itself, samples the “Technologic.” Hits “Around the World” and “Harder Better Faster Stronger” (i.e. the song that Kanye samples on “Stronger”) get mashed up into one of the best tracks on the album, all booming bass, pounding drums, squiggling synths and vocoder-processed vocals.
Ubiquitous hit “One More Time” gets paired with lesser-known song “Aerodynamic” to form one huge, freewheeling, synthesizer odyssey. The album ends with a mix of three songs from across the duo’s three-album career, “Superheroes,” “Human After All” and “Rock’n Roll.” The track makes for one of the most epic closing cuts to ever appear on an album.
But Alive 2007 has its faults.
At times, all the synthesizers and vocoder-vocals can become somewhat redundant. Overall, however, Daft Punk has managed to put out an exhilarating live album that comes damn near close to capturing the energy of the actual live show. If you’re looking for something to get a party going, or merely to dance to in your car while driving around town with your friends, look no further than Alive 2007. It’s the most daftly fun album to come out of the entire past year.