Daft Punk Are Human After All

August 7th, 2007

WOW.

As you may know, on Sunday I saw Daft Punk for the first (and possibly only?) time in my illustrious concert-going career. It was such an incredible spectacle of sound and lights that I don’t know if writing about it can do it even a shred of justice.

When we arrived at Arrow Hall (how is it that I’ve never been to Arrow Hall in my life, yet this week alone I was there twice?) there was an enormous line of partygoers coiling around the entirety of the parking lot. The crowd was prime fodder for an issue of Vice’s “Dos & Don’ts” section. In fact, I’d wager that you could fill the contents of an entire book based on the wardrobes of the concert goers. Everyone was either dressed horribly right, or horribly wrong. I was SO jealous that I wasn’t part of THIS crew – pictured here is about 1/4 of the neon partygoers that coordinated outfits:

The Rapture opened – while I’m not a huge fan of the band, I do like one song a lot (Don Go Do It) which they thankfully played before tearing into a segue for Sebastian & Kavinsky’s DJ set that preceded Daft Punk‘s grand entrance. As soon as the DJs started playing (treating us to a mix of Klaxons, Justice & Daft Punk songs, remixed), people started losing their shit. Everyone was butted up against each other and a huge cloud of condensation started to form above the sweaty mass.

At 9:41, eleven minutes after Daft Punk were supposed to start, but four minutes before they actually did, I heard the familiar guitar of Rage Against The Machine‘s Killing In The Name Of, a song that downright terrifies me when it’s played in public, if only for the fact that 80% of the crowd at Daft Punk was made of dudes under the influence of one thing or another, 100% of whom were getting anxious and cranky that Daft Punk hadn’t gone on stage yet. The choice to play a remix of this song was pretty socially irresponsible – because once it kicked in to the part where Zack starts screaming “Fk you, I won’t do what ya tell me!!!”, the tightly packed crowd started pogo-ing like crazy and thrashing around like angry gnats.

Daft Punk’s entrance was spectacular. As other reviews have stated, it was a non-stop lights spectacle customized to every beat of every song. Hearing Daft Punk at such a constant, throbbing level made me feel like I’d been transported onto the island of Ibiza, with everyone around me dancing with their eyes closed. EVERYONE was dancing and/or jumping along; it was an outright dance holocaust!! The only annoying part was the incessant crowd surfing. With everyone facing the front, getting kicked or nudged in the head with someone’s boot or other body part was a total nuisance. One guy face planted into the concrete floor so hard when no one caught him that he was wiping his bloody maw onto his shirt for the rest of the show.

And the setlist…oh wow. It was a constant medley of favourites, with Daft Punk weaving songs like Around The World, Harder, Better Faster Stronger and Technologic into a bunch of other songs seamlessly. I was SO glad that they played my three absolute favourite songs: Human After All, Rollin’ & Scratchin’, Aerodynamic and Crescendolls. I can’t get a hold of the exact setlist, but if I recall correctly, they opened with Robot Rock before morphing into One More Time and then a super extended version of Technologic. The only songs missing from the set (IMO) were Veredis Quo and Digital Love.