Send "Daft Punk " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 This is not the new Daft Punk album. It's a score for a Disney franchise film that cost an estimated $200 million to make. As such, there are lots of classical-inspired strings and horns played by an 85-strong orchestra. Most of the soundtrack's 22 pieces don't last more than three minutes; only a few could be considered actual songs. And while we knew this was going to be a score since it was first reported nearly two years ago, it's tough to shake the gloom of blown expectations while listening to the same ominous theme as it repeats in slightly mutated forms across the hour-long soundtrack. The French duo's current move is almost undeniably disappointing, but it's also not a surprise.Daft Punk aren't the same two guys who made Homework and Discovery. Over the course of the last decade, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have increasingly relied on images to complement-- and sometimes justify-- their music. Since their last proper LP, 2005's Human After All, the pair staged the greatest dance music tour of all time-- one that blasted its audience with enough visual stimuli to leave them blinking stars for hours. The pyramid, the gleaming helmets, and the lite-bright leather jackets brought Daft Punk's greatest hits to a holy, undiscovered realm. Their 2006 art-house indulgence Electroma went even further as it was directed by the twosome yet featured no new music. Daft Punk haven't even attempted a can't-miss song in at least five years, and the Tron: Legacy soundtrack keeps that unfortunate streak alive. The score keeps another trend going, too. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo have flexed their robot obsession for years, but its nature has changed. On Discovery tracks like "Digital Love", "Something About Us", and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", they employed robotic voice effects to bring out the childlike naïveté of artificial intelligence. And Discovery's accompanying animated movie, Interstella 5555, was a bright and fun technicolor cartoon. But their mechanized fantasies have gotten continually darker since then-- consider the much more sinister robo effects on Human After All's "The Brainwasher" and "Television Rules the Nation". Electroma's two metal-machine leads commit harrowing self-destruct suicides. Most of the robot doomsaying can't compare with their ebullient side; their apocalyptic visions are hardly Philip K. Dick-worthy, and they're oftentimes a huge bummer to boot. Tron: Legacy is rated PG and aimed at igniting the imaginations of 10-year-old boys. When I watched it in IMAX 3D it was easy to revert back to my younger self and just gawk at the exquisite whiz-bang of it all. That said, it's pretty fucking dark. Most of the movie takes place in a virtual world that doesn't know sunlight-- it's like a futuristic version of Tolkien's Mordor. Almost all of the post-Han Solo humor that buoyed the original Tron is replaced by a thunderous seriousness (and blue-black color scheme) more akin to The Dark Knight. And the music follows suit with endless crescendos of pounding timpani drums and monolithic strings. Naturally, the music synchs a hell of a lot better when you're watching the stunning images it was made to accompany. Daft Punk's score plays a vital role in making this poorly scripted mega movie seem bigger and more important than it actually is....full text |
| Guardian |
| It's not often the soundtrack for a film is awaited as itchily as the film itself. But Tron Legacy, the sequel to the influential 1982 thriller set inside a video game, has been scored by French electronic music heroes Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, more succinctly known as Daft Punk. Even while dancing with blacked-out motorcycle helmets on their heads, Daft Punk are a band unable to put a foot wrong. As rumours of their involvement began seeping out more than 18 months ago, retro-futurists everywhere began glowing neon. Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Daft Punk Tron Legacy EMI 2010 Daft Punk's album of 2001, Discovery, cemented the duo as the most influential contemporary electronic band. Yes, their gimpy Power Ranger disguises paid knowing tribute to Kraftwerk's mensch-machines. But they rescued French pop from ridicule. It might be stretching credulity to spandex proportions to lay the entire 00s synth-pop craze at their doorstep as well. But when the house music of Homework, Daft Punk's debut, morphed into a mischievous take on a previously scorned decade on Discovery, Daft Punk set a benchmark. Plaudits flowed in from LCD Soundsystem ("Daft Punk Is Playing at My House") and Kanye West. West's "Stronger" didn't so much sample Daft Punk as import Daft Punk's aesthetic wholesale. Since then, Daft Punk have been coasting, however. Their disappointing 2005 album, Human After All, was written in haste. Their 2007 film, Electroma, was well received, but featured none of their music. Their 2007 live album won a Grammy, but again, no new music. Despite a decade of damp squibbing, however, Daft Punk's stock remains high. Fans routinely expect the next Daft Punk release to be another magnum opus, a game-changer. By any reckoning, the Tron sequel is the film Daft Punk were born to soundtrack, featuring, as it does, avatars wearing futuristic bike leathers and go-faster (harder-louder-stronger) helmets. It is a film set inside a game. The soundtrack does mark a major change in the duo's sound. But that game-changing album is still some way off. In pre-release publicity, the band have been praising the staying power of the Stradivarius, a clue, perhaps, to the duo's approach to Tron. Somewhat dishearteningly, they have let rip with catgut, sounding, not like Daft Punk reinventing the film soundtrack, but instead, like a great many classical-aping film soundtracks that have gone before. "Derezzed" is one glorious exception in which corrupted, gamey sonics motor along sensationally. The burbling, buzzing stroll of "End of Line" is another. But there are too few such innovations and too many "Adagios for Tron". In situ, as light bikes race and weaponised Frisbees soar in this film vehicle about vehicles, Daft Punk's soundtrack will undoubtedly dispense plenty of awe. "Rectifier", particularly, seems made entirely from jangling nerves. But Tron is not the second coming of Daft; it is a canonical sound-bed first and a Daft Punk record very much second....full text |
| Telegraph |
| French synth-duo Daft Punk have certainly earned the right to soundtrack the latest Tron: Legacy film since they spent their entire career behaving as if they were characters from it. Famous for never appearing in public without their robot helmets on, they appear like men-machines, wired into their banks of electronic instruments. But despite making their own offbeat film Electroma, in 2006, the pair have never written a soundtrack before and they have big shoes to fill. The 1982 film score was written by Wendy Carlos, who was also responsible for the music in A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Related Articles The new Jazz Age 09 Dec 2010 Coming soon: new films 03 Dec 2010 Daft Punk fans beware – this record is aimed on the whole nowhere near the dance floor. One half of the duo, Thomas Bangalter said, “We knew from the start that there was no way we were going to do this film score with two synthesizers and a drum machine.” To that end, they have employed the services of an 85-piece orchestra and the results, at least initially, sound almost overly indebted to, if not pastiches of the sounds of John Carpenter’s Star Wars, Vangelis’ Blade Runner and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – films you imagine Daft Punk are also rather fond of. But underneath the conventional, foreboding codas, there beats the identifiably mentronomically futuristic sound of the duo. Particularly on the aptly titled The Game has Changed, menacingly industrial snares and hisses flare up against a nervously sawing string section in the perfect aural approximation of a struggle between human and computer life. Daft Punk fans will probably end up downloading the synth-based stuff and leaving the more conventional strings behind. The fortunes of this soundtrack will ultimately rest with the success of the film but its brooding mix of old and new styles certainly wets your appetite to see it....full text |
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