It is through an enigmatic video posted on social networks, soberly titled "Epilogue", that the French Daft Punk, the most famous electro duo in the world, announced, Monday, February 22, their separation.
The video, just over eight minutes long, shows the two members, wearing their traditional robot helmets, advancing through a desert.
But they no longer walk at the same pace and after a few evocative nods of the head, those of a renunciation, one ends up triggering the system of self-destruction of the other, which pulverizes.
French electro ambassadors
A historical press officer of the duo confirmed the end of the tandem formed in 1993 by Thomas Bangalter, 46, and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, 47.
They who were famous for their hit "One More Time" ("Again") will never make music together again.
The end of a story is human, after all - that's the name of one of their albums ("Human After All").
To think that the rumors of a new album swarmed cyclically.
Until recently, Twitter was on fire to say they could make a Super Bowl halftime appearance.
But no one saw the end coming.
Since the thunderous and abrasive "Homework" (1997), the duo have been the greatest ambassadors of French electro.
An indestructible status, solidified with three other successes each time planetary, "Discovery" (2001), "Human After All" (2005) and "Random Access Memories" (2013), with its planetary hit "Get Lucky", as well as outstanding stage performances.
It had been fourteen years since Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, friends since high school, had not performed in concerts, except for very rare appearances during televised ceremonies.
One last nugget
An absence that could relate to a strategy of media silence adopted from their beginnings - we do not know their faces, hidden under a robot helmet -, allowing to arouse expectations, fantasies and desires.
Their anonymity was also a running gag from the movie "Eden", by Mia-Hansen Love.
While their records are broadcast everywhere, the two young men cannot be admitted to Parisian evenings where they are invited because the physiognomists at the entrance do not know their features.
In recent years, the Parisian duo with six Grammy Awards gleaned in the United States had contented to collaborate with the Canadian The Weeknd for two tracks, "Starboy" and "I Feel It Coming", before producing the track "Overnight" of the Australian group Parcels.
At the beginning of the year, a nugget had resurfaced.
A new "set" had just been found 25 years later, recorded on two banal audio cassettes forgotten at the bottom of a shoebox.
A little gem discovered by chance, near Avignon.
At the origin of this discovery, Benoît Chow, 25, was barely born when the pioneers of the French Touch performed on Saturday, November 18, 1995, on the stage of the Privé, the discotheque that his father then ran, in Les Angles, in the suburbs of the city of the Popes.
With AFP
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