Okay, so idk a lot about daft punk, and I'm sure this has been answered, but why do they wear the helmet costume things? Which are really cool looking btw.
Daft Punk circa 1995, Thomas Bangalter (l) and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo ®
Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, the pair that make up Daft Punk, have always held that the most important thing for them is their music and that they wanted to keep their private lives as private as possible.
“As a listener, you are always curious of seeing people’s faces. But I think it’s quite ordinary people that make the music.” - Thomas Bangalter, Jockey Slut, 1996
As their career began to take off with the release of their 1996 debut album Homework, the duo would wear masks and digitally obscure their faces in press releases and photographs. Their desire to remain private was even written into their contract with Virgin Records.
In fact, there is only one full-length article with an unmasked photo-shoot of the pair, Jockey Slut in 1996.
As they began work on their follow-up album, Discovery, they sought out a more permanent way to hide their identities. They enlisted the help of renowed special effects company Alterian, Inc. to create their robotic alter egos. You can watch a short documentary about the making of the helmets HERE.
They debuted their robot selves in 1999, creating their 9/99/99 origin story.
“We were doing a track and our sampler crashed and exploded and there were sparks. We were hurt a little bit so we had to make a little surgery and then we became robots.” - Thomas Bangalter, The Face, November 2000
Bangalter (silver, l) and Homem-Christo (gold, r)
The helmets have gone through several variations throughout the duo’s career. The Discovery era helmets were equipped with LED lights and both Thomas and Guy-Man could program their visors to read text. THIS is an old MTV interview were Thomas uses the visor to speak.
For their third album, Human After All, they did away with the LED lights and text capabilities to create sleeker helmets.
The helmets have basically stayed the same since then save for some minor tweaks - mouth shape on Thomas’ helmet, the wires getting covered on Guy-Man’s, etc. But the look has become iconic.
“Looking at robots is not like looking at an idol. It’s not like a human being, so it’s more like a mirror - the energy people send to the stage bounces back and everybody has a good time rather than focusing on us.” - Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Pitchfork, 2013
