French electronic-music duo ‘Daft Punk’ declares breakup after 28 years

The enigmatic, powerful French electronic-music duo released four albums and collected six Grammys all through a lifelong set apart by a lack of engagement in popularity.

The enigmatic, pseudo-anonymous, retro-futuristic French electronic duo Daft Punk has separated, the group reported on Monday in exemplary structure — silently, through music and iconography, in a YouTube video called “Epilogue.”

A publicist expert for Daft Punk, Kathryn Frazier, affirmed the separation and said there would be no further remark as of now.

Established by the previous indie-rock bandmates Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter in Paris in 1993, Daft Punk proceeded to win six Grammy Awards (counting collection of the year for “Random Access Memories” in 2014); team up generally, with decade-traversing craftsmen from Giorgio Moroder to the Weeknd; and impact endless different makers, D.J.s, rappers and pop stars with its dedication to persona and its novel mix of house, techno, pop, disco and rock.

“The duo’s defining balancing act has been breaking new ground while simultaneously invoking earlier golden ages of club music, like disco and 1980s electro-pop,” the critic Simon Reynolds wrote in The New York Times in 2013, when Daft Punk allowed an uncommon meeting.

Since the last part of the 1990s, the team has introduced itself as extraordinary and uninterested in the features of acclaim or superstar, wearing robot protective caps that would turn into its brand name (Bangalter regularly in silver, de Homem-Christo in gold), and seldom saying anything by any stretch of the imagination.

At the point when the men gathered their prize for “Random Access Memories” at the Grammys — one of four they won that evening, bringing their vocation absolute to six — the performers Paul Williams and Nile Rodgers, who dealt with the collection, talked all things considered.

In the “Epilogue” video reporting Daft Punk’s end, which was taken to some degree from the gathering’s 2006 film “Electroma,” the two individuals are seen strolling together in the matching motorcycle jackets.

At the point when they meet, the one in the silver cap takes off his coat, which is enhanced with the Daft Punk logo, and different presses a catch on his back that begins a 60-second clock. As it checks down, he leaves, always failing to think back, and is then blown separated, breaking into pieces that take after a machine in excess of a man of fragile living creature and blood.

The song “Touch,” from “Random Access Memories,” starts playing — “Hold on,” go the lyrics, “if love is the answer, you’re home” — as the leftover bandmate strolls into the nightfall. The years 1993 to 2021 blaze on the screen.

Dumb Punk released its debut album, “Homework,” on Virgin Records in 1997, finding far-fetched global hits in “Da Funk” and “Around the World.” The team’s development, “Disclosure,” turned out in 2001 and included singles like “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” (later sampled by Kanye West) and “One More Time.” In 2005, the gathering delivered “Human After All,” visiting widely in the two years subsequent to, including a noteworthy exhibition on an intricate light-up pyramid at Coachella in 2006 that was Daft Punk’s first show in the United States in almost 10 years. A live album from this period, “Alive 2007,” later won the Grammy for best electronic/dance album.

In the years that followed, even as its legend developed thus called E.D.M. D.J.s and makers turned into a billion-dollar business, Daft Punk withdrew to some degree from the example based dance music it advocated. For “Random Access Memories,” which would be delivered by another mark, Columbia Records, the gathering utilized prestigious meeting players and looked to make “every sound from scratch, creating a sonic world from the ground up,” Bangalter revealed to The Times.

“In some ways it’s like we’re running on a highway going the opposite direction to everybody else,” he said, adding: “Computers were never designed in the first place to become musical instruments.”

“Get Lucky,” the album’s lead single featuring Pharrell Williams, would proceed to turn into the gathering’s best tune to date, hitting No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Dumb Punk later accomplished its sole profession No. 1 as visitors on “Starboy” by the Weeknd, which they performed (alongside another joint effort, “I Feel It Coming”) at the Grammys in 2017. It would be their final show.