The demise of Daft Punk caught a lot of us off guard back in 2021, but for producer Todd Edwards, who worked with the band twice, it didn’t come as a huge surprise.
Speaking in the latest official Daft Punk mini documentary, created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their fourth and final album, Random Access Memories, Edwards said: “When they broke up, they were already going in different directions, musically. Guy-Man[uel de Homem-Christo] seems to be drawn more to the hip-hop realm and Thomas [Bangalter] was also a director. It kind of felt like they weren’t on the same page anymore, anyway, so I wasn’t shocked.”
Edwards’ first collaboration with Daft Punk came in 2001, when he provided vocals and co-production on Face to Face, from the band’s Discovery album. He went on to fulfil the same roles on Fragments of Time, a country-tinged slice of LA soft-rock from Random Access Memories.
Edwards says he was somewhat in awe of the “legendary musicians” that Daft Punk hired to play on RAM. Fragments of Time, for example, features Michael Jackson collaborator Paul Jackson Jr on guitar, Nathan East on bass and Omar Hakim on drums.
Despite these big names, Edwards wasn’t initially convinced that he was a good fit for the song. “There’s a little bit of pressure and stress inside of me because it’s this country-sounding gospel track and I’m like, ‘I’ve never written to something like that before.’”
It all worked out in the end, though, and Edwards suggests that, rather than continuing to mourn the end of Daft Punk, other musicians should instead take inspiration from them.
“I think the fact that it was so devastating to people shows that there needs to be more Daft Punks out there,” he says. “If anything it should inspire people to be more creative and take chances and stop doing the same thing and playing it safe all the time.”
