One half of Daft Punk talks Britney, Madonna and why girls don't like robots…

Daft Punk are one of the most influ­en­cial dance bands of all time apart from Technotronic and they are certainly one of the most casually-ref­er­enced, in an 'if it sounds like it wasn't recorded with an acoustic guitar let's just say it sounds like Daft Punk' kind of way.

Anyway we spoke to Guy-Manuel Christo De-Homem the other day because he was plugging the DVD release of Electroma which is that film where they drive around and (SPOILER ALERT!) die.

Questions: Peter Robinson
Answers: Guy-Manuel Christo De-Homem from Daft Punk (obviously)

Here is what he had to say for himself…

Hello Guy-Man. What is it that makes girls not under­stand how brilliant robots are? 
Maybe it’s that men are more mech­an­ical — like with cars. When you’re a
boy you like cars and robots are full of mechanics too – screws and
metal. Girls are more rigid. Maybe they prefer their dolls.

Promoting anything via a series of telephone chats with people you've never met and never will meet is the highlight of most musicians' careers. Do you prefer promoting your music or things like Electroma?
We really enjoy promoting both because we’re happy with both projects. If we have to talk about it… [LOUD SCREAMING IN BACKGROUND] Sorry, I’m taking care of my baby. He’s very small. [One minute passes] I’m back now. He’s alright now.

Now then, you’ve produced the new Sebastien Tellier album…
Yes, they’ve put a taster song out from it called ‘Sexual Sportswear’ which is the only song on the album without any vocals on it, but the album is very varied and very good. He asked me and I was really flattered and directly I answered ‘yes’. For me, Sebastien is maybe the best singer and composer in France today.

Do you turn sample requests down? 
We don’t have so many pro­postiions for that, actually. Most people prefer sampling old records. So it’s funny that Busta Rhymes and Kanye West sampled recent ones by us.

It would frankly be a bit rich for you to tell people they can’t sample your tunes.
Yes, we are really happy to be part of the sampling loop. As you said we do samples so when the project is inter­est­ing we’re happy to be part of the tradition.

We get the impres­sion you might not make another Daft Punk album, is that right? 
I don’t know if there’ll be a next Daft Punk album. It’s true that we’re going to do Daft Punk stuff, though, when we’re energised. The tour has been incred­ible and people every­where in the world have been reacting bril­liantly. We’re so happy that whatever is next could be a movie or an album but there’ll be def­in­itely be more Daft Punk stuff coming up. At the moment on our schedule we’re touring until Christmas then after that we’ll be free and ready to work again.

Who've you turned down for pro­duc­tion duties recently? 
We didn’t have any requests this year, except from Sebastien Tellier. None what­so­ever. It’s something we would be happy to do in the future, maybe there will be some requests next year.

If Britney or Madonna had asked you to work on their albums would you have been interested? 
I think both of them already have asked in the past, in fact. But unfor­tu­nately we were too busy at the time and we couldn’t do it. In the future when we have more time then maybe.

So would you like to work with Madonna? 
Well that depends on what we want to do at the time. It depends. I don’t know.

It must depend on what she would be doing, too, and whether it was all just so she could run around going 'OH MY GOD LOOK AT ME DAFT PUNK HAVE PRODUCED MY NEW ALBUM I'M REALLY COOL'.
Yeah, exactly. There are all these con­sid­er­a­tions you’re talking about. But yes, it just depends on the moment you’re asked. If you feel it and if you feel something cre­at­ively inter­est­ing then it’s possible.

Do you have a 'cre­at­ively inter­est­ing' test potential col­lab­or­at­ors need to pass?
For everything that we’re asked to do, if we have a creative answer and think we might bring something to a project then we can do it, but if we don’t have any ideas or don’t think we can push the envelope by creating with anybody… Well, if you take Sebastien Tellier for example it is one of the few col­lab­or­a­tions where I had the idea that I could do something and bring something to it. But it’s all about the moment and the situation. When it feels right to us, when we feel it we do it. And when we have the time. There’s so many factors.

You’re obviously very proud and pro­tect­ive of Daft Punk as a brand. Is there anything you regret doing? 
No. Nothing. It takes us a lot of thinking or work to really achieve what we want to do and always make sure that what we put out – an album, a video, a song, a film – is something we really validate. We really talk about it and make sure that once it’s gone outside we still get to approve it and still approve it after many years. We'd like to do some timeless stuff with timeless appeal and, for example, with the first album we still love it and there’s nothing we’d regret about any of it. It takes a lot of energy to do that and sometimes we have to decline some stuff but that’s only to make sure we’re happy with everything we do for many years.

Thank you very much, Guy-Manuel De Christo-Homem out of Daft Punk.