Daft Punk announced their split after almost 3 decades together. NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks to the Simon Reynolds about the electronic music duo’s heritage.

Ari Shapiro, host:

Their first album produced hits that have been achieved worldwide.

(Soundbite of Song, “Auth the World”)

Daft Punk: (Song) in the world, the world.

SHAPIRO: They came here even stronger.

(Soundbite of Song, “Hard, Better, Fast faster, stronger”)

Daft Punk: (Sing) Harder, better, faster, stronger.

SHAPIRO: And 28 years, they were more like Lucky.

(Soundbite of Song, “Get Lucky”)

Pharrell Williams: (Vocals) I’m ready to get lucky.

Shapiro: Well, today, the French electronic music duo Daft Punk has announced that they were separating. The organization was one of the greatest acts of dance music of all time. Simon Reynolds music journalist joins Daft Punk and his firm robot masks.

Nice to have you here.

Simon Reynolds: It’s good to be with you.

SHAPIRO: First of all, I have to ask how seriously you take this breakdown announcement because there have been musical acts announcing their disbandment. Then they get back together, or it turns out to be a PR stroke. Daft Punk says it’s the end.

Reynolds: You know, there is the option that someone offers them that they cannot reject, and that they will be reform. And it will be a massive matter. But I think that of a laugh, they have a pretty serious group. They take what they do seriously, even if many camps are a laugh and in a way, there are many concepts behind.

And I think they were probably missing instructions to spend their music. His new album was released 2013, and has finished a circle for them. They started very founded on samples, using curls, you know, disc alcs and all this wonderful music of the 70s and 80s. And then they have reached the point where they did it. You know, it’s an arc. It is a really attractive arc, very virtual to be absolutely analog. Where can they happen alone?

Shapiro: So he brings back to his progress in the 90s. What are prominent and made them explode?

Reynolds: There was a time when a lot of dance music was very minimal and difficult, and they have brought this type of emotion and this type of Sashay, you know, through the sampling of a lot of nightclub, which makes it curly in an incredibly addictive and tornaly way. There was a type of transcendent artificiality in its sound. And then it has become even more pronounced in the album “Discovery”, where they depend on things that were very modern at that time, you know, the type of era of Candy Rock of the 70s, but they wove it in fashion dance music. And I think, you know, there is a lot of irony and there is a lot of love and concern for pop music in what Daft Punk does.

Shapiro: “Get Lucky” the great piece of his 2013 album “Random Access Memories”, which is such an environment of his past work. Tell us how they have evolved and what they were looking for at this level of their career.

Reynolds: they were sampling teachers and those fragments of all kinds of records, placing gold, you know, on quite indenable records and transforming them into clues. And then they made the decision that they were tired and that they really searched to locate how to make the type of music that others would try, you know, because they looked for this type of sensation and funk of the albums that encouraged them. And that’s how a massive project, and took them 2 years and a year. And they, it was almost like a type of time travel exercise, returning to the way recordings were carried out in the 1970s.

Shapiro: How much does the creation of this US market for electronic dance music that we see today?

Reynolds: they had done it: Daft Punk had a very wonderful influence on EDM’s explosion. And, you know, the way Daft Punk hid his identity a mask, that type of robot helmets, is very similar to the way Deadmau5 carries this giant mouse head, do you know? And they brought this concept that electronic music, when it occurs on stage, does not want to be only two boys, safe computers, very indefinable air. You couldn’t demonstrate, do you know? They remodeled dance music in this audiovisual show.

Shapiro: Simon Reynolds in the career of the Dak Daft dance music duo, which calls it after almost 30 years.

Thanks Simon.

Reynolds: Extremely cheerful to be with you.

(Soundbite of Music)