Tron: Legacy Daft Punk, Disney, 6th December
Daft Punk are best known for the thumping, futuristic anthems which brought dance music back into the mainstream. Almost as famous are their dazzling robot helmets. For at least a decade, no one save their closest associates has been allowed to lift the visors. Their refusal to suffer television appearances or interviews has made these Grammy-winning Frenchmen into something of an enigma, a marketing ploy rarely contemplated in these bare-all times. (Though if you Google Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, pre-helmet photos appear.)
Two years ago they left their Parisian management company for Hollywood and have been working on a film score ever since. Tron: Legacy is the sequel to the 1982 cult film Tron, in which proto-geek Jeff Bridges finds himself trapped inside a hostile—but, by today’s standards, crude—software environment. It promises to be this season’s science-fiction blockbuster, and Daft Punk’s cybernetic, nano-perfect production values are well suited to the story—the duo even cameo in the film as DJs. One hundred musicians worked on the recording and the result, the first Daft Punk studio release in five years, is likely to be as fascinating as it is epic.
