It’s easy to forget, but before they came to favour robot masks and proggy bombast – a dangerous predilection that culminated in last year’s orchestra-assisted Tron:Legacy soundtrack – Daft Punk were just two cool French dudes making some of the most lip-smackingly original and outrageously danceable house, techno and electro on the planet.
Their vital, swaggering early singles – including ‘Da Funk’ and ‘The New Wave’ – were released on Slam’s Soma label. Now the Scottish imprint has unearthed a previously unreleased Daft Punk production from the vaults.
“At the tail end of 2010 we combed through boxes of DATs, pictures and god knows what else to find artefacts of Soma’s early days. Imagine our surprise when we discovered a tape simply titled ‘Daft Drive’. We hooked up the DAT machine and inserted the tape with the utmost care, pressing play and praying that for one, the tape contained what we hoped, and two, that it didn’t savage it like a dog chewing on a bone. In amongst the hiss and crackle, a monstrous 909 kick drum began to thud – Daft Punk’s ‘Drive’ track had been rediscovered. Playing through was live Daft Punk: the freaky vocals, pounding Roland drums & synths and that distinctive DP compression. After standing in awed silence, witnessing this moment, the track faded off and we heard the sounds of French words that the recording had been made over; the remnants of their parents audio collection. The tape had originally been sent with Rollin’ and Scratchin’ to be released as Soma25 but Soma asked these two bright-eyed and techno-bound Frenchmen, to finish and send Da Funk instead and ‘Drive’ was shelved for a later date. Until now.”
‘Drive unreleased 1994′ will appear on the 3xCD compilation Soma 20 Years, due out on September 19.
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