The year is 2021 and two helmet-wearing future disco robots walk across the bleak badlands of a world gripped by paranoia, pandemics and pollution. The pair say nothing, but understand each other perfectly and know what must be done. Moments later, after a countdown is triggered, we watch as one half of the team explodes into smithereens. Here one moment, gone the next.
Daft Punk’s final offering, ‘Epilogue’, is a seven-minute short for our times and farewell message to fans of the world-beating Gallic electronic music producers and DJs, AKA Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Utilising iconography that has defined their presence from landmark debut album ‘Homework’ through to today (space-age suits, resolutely cinematic aesthetics and a strong sense of narrative), the on-screen action plays out in silence until the explosion, save for sounds of desolation.
We’re then left with a final overture, the choral-pop-electronic fanfare, ’Touch’.
Since the video was unveiled on Monday — supposedly marking ‘the official end of Daft Punk after 28 years’ — there has been an outpouring from fans and peers, with the outfit widely considered among music’s most influential of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Unsurprisingly, artefacts have since skyrocketed in value, with one Etsy maker reportedly selling $22,000 of replica helmets in 24 hours, and a double-vinyl copy of 2013 album ‘Random Access Memories’ going for $355 on eBay.
Whether rock ’n’ roll or techno, the debate as to whether artists should go out with a bang, on their terms, or fade into mediocrity and obscurity is omnipresent. With ‘Epilogue’ Daft Punk are resolute in their stance, in turn sending a clear message to us all. As with so much in life, the point is not to regret when something is over, but to celebrate that it existed in the first place. At a time when impermanence is a reality we can no longer escape from — a major bridge year between what the world was and what it will become — we can think of few better closing remarks.
