Always a step ahead ... Daft Punk in 2013. Photograph: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Tue 23 Feb 2021 05.35 EST
Last modified on Tue 23 Feb 2021 13.12 EST
It’s hard to think of an act who had a greater impact on the way 21st-century pop music sounds than Daft Punk. The style Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo minted on their 1997 debut album Homework – house music heavy on the filter effect, which involved the bass or treble on the track gradually fading in and out, mimicking a DJ playing with the equalisation on a mixer; drums treated with sidechain compression, so that the beats appeared to punch through the sound, causing everything else on the track to momentarily recede – is now part of pop’s lingua franca.