The almighty French electronic duo Daft Punk have treated fans to a 25th-anniversary edition re-release of their classic debut album Homework along with an exclusive live stream of a legendary Los Angeles gig.
The 25th-anniversary deluxe edition of Homework is available to download and stream on all of your favourite music services and platforms currently while Daft Punk’s website is currently taking pre-release orders for the vinyl edition. It features the original 16-track album as well as a bonus album of 15 remixes, nine of which have never been available on streaming services.
Remixes come courtesy of producers like DJ Sneak, house legend Todd Terry, and American garage house duo Kenlou. There are also several remixes of their international super hit ‘Around the World,’ ‘Burnin,’ and an acapella version of their track ‘Revolution 909.’
The secretive robotic duo, made up of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, announced their retirement of the Daft Punk project on this date last year, to the great dismay of their global legions of fans. They appear to have taken the anniversary of their breakup as an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate their work.
In addition to Homework, their wildly popular live album, Alive 1997, is also getting a re-issue although there is, naturally, no new releases packaged with this one.
The pair announced the updates just hours before they streamed their famous 1997 gig at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles on Twitch. The one-off stream, which began at 2:22pm on the 22/2/2022 PST or 9am this morning, 23 Feb AEDT, appeared to catch the world’s press off guard, with many outlets reporting the event after it had already begun.
The gig is infamous in le Daft fan circles for being one of the only performances the duo ever gave without wearing their signature robot helmets.
Daft Punk is widely regarded as one of the most influential electronic acts of all time. Founded in 1993, the duo’s career spanned almost three decades before coming to an abrupt end in 2021. They have sold millions of albums worldwide while receiving over 15 million monthly streams on Spotify. This is in spite of the fact that they never performed live after 2007.
Their debut album, Homework, was groundbreaking in solidifying the French House sound — blending funk, techno, and disco — and for taking electronic music mainstream.
They have been cited as influences by artists as widespread as LCD Soundsystem, Gesaffelstein, and Pharrell Williams. Their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, featuring Nile Rogers and Giorgio Moroder, was certified platinum and took out several Grammy awards that year, including Album of the Year.
How to Watch the Mayan Theatre Live Stream
If you missed the gig, it’s no longer available to live stream on Twitch. While the news is disheartening for many, thankfully the internet has already been hard at work preserving this historic piece of content.
Within hours, clones of the live stream emerged online, with fan sharing links to download the video in Google Drive files. There are also copies of the performance circulating on torrent sites for those with the technical know-how to acquire them.
If you’re not quite up to trawling through the depths of the internet to find a copy, several versions have been uploaded to YouTube and are available to stream now.
You can find different versions of varying quality here, here, here, and here, although for how long each or any of these will remain live is yet to be seen. It’s more than likely these videos will be hit with copyright claims and taken down soon so listen in while you still can!
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