RFI Musique - - Album review

Album review

Daft Punk

Tron: Legacy

Paris

21/12/2010 -

French duo Daft Punk have set out on their own Hollywood adventure, blending electronic sounds with a symphony orchestra to compose the film soundtrack for Tron: Legacy. The “retro futurist” result is classical yet daring.

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Five years after their last album, Human After All (2005), the best-known French electro partnership, Daft Punk, is back with an original soundtrack for the film Tron: Legacy. Hardcore techno fans risk being disappointed in an album primarily in the image of the film it depicts: a big production with an imposing, frenetic sound.

Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo and his sidekick Thomas Bangalter left their home studio and went to work in a space big enough to house a 90-strong symphony orchestra. The music starts off classical, with the obligatory swooping violins and roaring surge of the orchestra (Ouverture). But the electronic pulsing and synthesizers don’t take long to make an appearance (The Grid), taking the disc far away from a John Williams-style soundtrack (Outlands, Disc Wars).

Responding to the grandiloquence of the symphony orchestra, the power of the keyboards and electronic rhythms strike a modern balance (like the electric spirals of Derezzed and the saturated Fall). The 22 tracks cement a dark marriage between classical and electronic, reminiscent of the best Vangelis.

Produced by the Disney studios, the film is a follow-up to Tron, which was considered as avant-garde when it came out in 1982. Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, was shut into a video game. Almost 30 years on, Tron: Legacy sees Flynn’s son plunging back into the same computer world to try and find his father.

Image has always fascinated Daft Punk, who paid particular attention to their video clips right from the start. They had an animation film made for their second album, Discovery, before producing the film Daft Punk’s Electroma and making a short appearance in the new release of Tron: Legacy.