Spin Hails Daft Punk As Entertainers of the Year

As the curtain draws back, only their helmets and torsos are visible inside the pyramid, and blips of light pulse across blackness on the LED video screens covering its base. A massive lattice of glowing tubes serves as a second tier of lighting, and a large black curtain covered in diodes provides the stage's backdrop. "Robot Rock," off the duo's 2005 album, Human After All, replaces Close Encounters, and when the first drumbeat kicks in and Daft Punk pump their glove-covered fists, the crowd form pyramids with their fingers, bouncing in unison with such ecstatic violence that the scene looks like a soccer riot. In the year 3000.

All this might sound like a particularly vivid '90s-rave flashback. But many of the lucky 67,800 who witnessed the eight-date North American leg of the Daft Punk Alive 2007 tour -- alternatively a provocative examination of the tenuous relationship between technology and humanity and the most mind-bending rock extravaganza since Pink Floyd's pig took flight -- are evangelical and slavish in their devotion. [...]

As the show progresses, the pyramid's visuals escalate from minimal
eight-bit-style lines to complex 3-D geometric patterns, culminating in
a racing montage of human faces. By the finale, "One More Time," the
robot suits themselves are part of the light show, electroluminescent
piping making the duo look like Tron characters come to life.

"It's
not just performing and creating music and images that makes the show,"
says Bangalter. "It's God, in the middle of 30,000 people."