It’s remembered as one of the greatest electronic music performances in history – and the one that 'broke' EDM in the US – but Daft Punk’s legendary 2006 set at Coachella was no walk in the park for its protagonists.
This marked the debut of the band’s now iconic LED pyramid stage, which the duo the duo – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – went on to use on their Alive tour.
The only problem, Bangalter now tells The Times, is that the performance took place in the intense heat of the desert, which meant that performing in their trademark robot helmets and leather jackets was uncomfortable, to say the least. So, knowing that conditions were going to be difficult, Bangalter came up with an unconventional way of preparing when they had their final rehearsal.
“I said to Guy-Man, ‘Let’s wear ski jackets – if we get through that anything will be easy,’” he remembers. “And that’s what we did – it was the worst ever.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bangalter reflects on Daft Punk’s legacy, and says that there was never any grand plan.
“We accidentally worked on these structures that ended up becoming retro-futuristic electronic pop music,” he confirms.
Bangalter also touches on how he feels now that Daft Punk are over – “I was one of the robots, but now I’m just a human without any superpowers" – and says that he made a conscious effort to move away from electronic music after he and Homem-Christo called time on the band in 2021.
“After Daft Punk, I almost took the resolution of saying, ‘I don’t want to program things.’ It’s a very tedious [means of] construction,” he says.
Sure enough, Bangalter’s first post-Daft Punk project was a 90-minute orchestral score for a new ballet, Mythologies, but he did return to the DJ booth alongside Fred Again in 2025, their set featured plenty of his former band’s songs.
Bangalter is quick to shut down any talk of a reunion, though. “Most of the Daft Punk songs were played by Fred,” he points out, before suggesting that he wouldn’t want to risk damaging the band’s legacy by going back to it.
“I’m really happy that throughout our long run we were able to not screw it up,” says Bangalter. “There are other things to explore.”
