Much has been made of how this album is Daft Punk's attempt to recreate a kind of 70s studio album experience with high profile guest spots and classic recording techniques. Random Access Memories, Daft Punk's first studio album in eight years, stands in direct opposition to everything that moment six years ago seemed to represent. The message delivered was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the knees - with DJ Falcon and Bangalter's 'Together' accompanied by images of a thousand smiling faces of all ages and from all nations beaming from the pyramid itself - but there wasn't one person who didn't go home from that show feeling a little bit better about the world.
The Alive show's ten minute finale was the logical culmination of this. The attention may have been on the men wearing robot masks, but the men behind them wasn't important – what mattered was the shared experience of the dance.
Emerging in the post-rave era of the superstar DJ, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo opted out of the public eye, and in their own way subverted the chart dance of the time, taking it back to a more neutral space. The Alive show felt like the logical culmination of Daft Punk's career to date. But despite the high concept nature of the show, it was never about the spectacle – it was about togetherness. The duo's audio visual pyramid created a template for the electronic music live show that many have since tried to emulate to varying degrees of success since – Etienne De Crecy has his cube, Amon Tobin has his ISAM, Scuba has his… fluorescent tubing. For those that saw it six years ago, Daft Punk's Alive tour has become the stuff of legend.
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