A conversation between true musical masterminds and multi-hyphenates, The Invite composer Devonté Hynes aka Blood Orange and composer & DJ Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk.
Topics covered include: Devonté’s cello score as the fifth lead in The Invite, Daft Punk working with an 85 piece orchestra on Tron: Legacy (also starring Olivia Wilde!), finding the magic chemistry between strings and dialogue, monophonic vs. polyphonic, a great note from a Disney executive, extreme precision, the true effort it takes to bring soul to synthesizers, composing the Mythologies ballet score before the choreography existed, Random Access Memories being made like a film without cameras, the 250 tracks on Daft Punk’s “Touch,” spending two years with just a piano and GoPro, restoring Electroma in 35mm for Tribeca Film Festival, and curiosity as an antidote to the algorithm.
Thomas Bangalter: Hello, this is Thomas Bangalter.
Devonté Hynes: I'm Devonté Hynes, and this is The A24 Podcast. And we're live.
Thomas Bangalter: We're live, yes. How are you doing?
Devonté Hynes: I'm good. I'm good. How are you?
Thomas Bangalter: I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you. I feel like I got invited about an invite? So, it feels like there's a meta quality to it. Because you just scored The Invite from Olivia Wilde?
Devonté Hynes: Yes. Yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: Which I was invited to see, and I enjoyed it very much.
Devonté Hynes: Cool. Okay, great.
Thomas Bangalter: I think it's a terrific film. Amazing performances, amazing cast.
Devonté Hynes: Yes.
Thomas Bangalter: You know, I have this connection with Olivia because she was in Tron: Legacy, and we scored Tron: Legacy, the Disney film from 2010. And it's funny because with Guy-Manuel [de Homem-Christo], I worked on this film for maybe a year, a year and a half. There was no temp music, so we were really creating some music before the film's shoot started. And also some music while we had a first cut. And so a lot of the music was with Olivia's face on a blue screen for months. And Jeff Bridges and Garrett [Hedlund] as well. So it was super cool and exciting to see her masterfully direct this film.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, she's an incredible director.
Thomas Bangalter: Masterful performances from her and her cast. And an amazing score. And I have some questions about the score.
Devonté Hynes: Thank you.
Thomas Bangalter: First, I think I prefer not to spoil anything about the film. I think there's so many plot twists, and it's entertaining and it's moving. And I want to speak more about the relationship with the film, but without speaking too much about the film.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. It's tricky. I just did an interview about the film and realized it's hard to talk about a film without-
Thomas Bangalter: Yeah. And also, it's funny because I feel…I've always loved Andy Warhol and Interview Magazine, and this idea of artists interviewing and discussing. And it's fun because here it's a podcast, and I don't know who's interviewing who.
Devonté Hynes: Yes. I know.
Thomas Bangalter: But I have questions because obviously, I love the creative process. I'm not gonna spoil it too much if I say it's almost a single cello.
Devonté Hynes: No, it's okay. Yeah, you can say that.
Thomas Bangalter: But, and I know you're a cellist, but can you tell me a bit more about what was the idea behind it?
Devonté Hynes: So I kind of put the idea out while I was talking to Olivia. I'd seen the first 10 minutes of the film. She showed it to me. And then she told me how essentially the whole film kind of takes place in this apartment. And so I started thinking about plays and the idea of quote-unquote “live instrumentation.” And also this idea of relationships and how some moments are so dramatic and they feel life-and-death and very intense. And when partners start bickering, and someone gets their feelings hurt, the emotion feels, I don't know, if I think of operas or something like it, to that person, it feels so much grander than maybe what the actual thing was. And so I started thinking about... Initially, I actually did think about opera as a first kind of world the score could live in. Almost… Not making fun of the situation, but somewhat overdramatizing it. And then I thought that was maybe too grand. And then, I was saying a lot of ideas, and then at one point I just said, "Oh, maybe all of it is cello." And she loved that idea.
Thomas Bangalter: So it was your idea?
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: I think what I find the most exciting and compelling is the way that it interacts with the dialogue in such a precise and almost choreographed way, you know? I mean, right now, I'm really immersed in contemporary dance and ballet music. And I really felt that there was this connection where you have these four characters, and the music and the performance of the cello and the music writing and the nuance, it kind of operates on a level where it's like an accompaniment to the dance. You know, of that thing. And so I was like, "Wow, there's a way of a choreographic nature." And at the same time, you have two levels of reality in it where you have... I mean, it starts, it's not maybe spoiling it too much with this kind of couple argument. And which is spontaneous in nature, although you don't know if it's spontaneous or if it's a repetition and a certain pattern. But the way there's this kind of punctuation or counterpoint of the notes and the way they're interwoven. I don't know in English, interweaved.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, yeah, interwoven, yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: Yeah, interweaved in the dialogue. That was kind of fascinating to me because…Was there any type of music or any music in those sequences when you watched them?"
Devonté Hynes: You know, some moments had, but a lot of moments didn't. And it's cool that you see it that way because it is a dance. I think especially with films that are play-like in that way, where you do have these set numbers of characters, and they're physically interacting with each other and obviously in dialogue too. And I think that's why I wanted the music to be observant.
Thomas Bangalter: Yeah. When you say that, it almost feels like it's a demonstration of the power and nuance and the possibilities of the cello in some way. Almost like an electrocardiogram, you know, where you could have guinea pigs. And you have this tension between those characters, the way it starts, and you basically have you as a musician, that almost punctuates in a very precise way, the mood. And helps guide it without… And I really liked, especially the way... I always feel it's really hard when you make film scores to not manipulate emotionally, harmonically, the audience. And I really feel it was very successful in the first act, for example… Because I think after there are emotions, and it kind of flourishes. But to be able to work with that tension and those shifts and things like that…But the most interesting thing for me was really the interaction with the dialogue. And it's quite prominent, but it flows super cool. It makes me think about something going back to Tron. I remember when the idea of a Disney film with Daft Punk was, to me, using a full symphonic orchestra. So that was the idea. And I think director Joe initially was like, "Oh, no, no, I want you guys to do a full electronic score." And I was like, "No, no, no, that... If we do a full electronic..." I mean, at the time I'd done music for, like, 15 years, full electronic. “No, no, no. We're going to Hollywood. We're gonna use Fantasia. Like it's Disney. So it's like a full orchestra.” But I remember that I had this idea with Guy-Man, we were discussing how to put some electronic sounds in the mid-range. So I remember before going to... We were in Paris, and I spent, like, four months designing synth sounds. Also, initially, I had this big modular system, and I realized because we would have to go through so many recalls and changes and stuff that we couldn’t really use the big synth, which is unrecordable. So I remember doing this palette of sounds... But the problem was that when we started to experiment with picture, anything that was in the medium range frequently would conflict with dialogue.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, yeah, of course.
Thomas Bangalter: And then we ended up only using Tron, if you listen to the whole thing, this pulsing bass or more kind of almost a pitch, I think. For Tron it was a mix between Fantasia and Bernard Herman and John Carpenter or something where you do those kinds of pulses. But it was so limiting to feel like, “Oh, yeah, I have all these ideas about things that we can really make music.” But the whole thing about film score music is to take a step back and have the performance and not be in the way. And here, I was like, “Wow.” The interesting thing also is the cello has a very big range, I mean, frequentially from bass to kind of high... And somehow you nail the ability to be there but to almost be like a fifth person in some way.
Devonté Hynes: That's incredible.
Thomas Bangalter: But to not be in the way… I actually really liked at some point when there's a few of these moments where even… You become louder than the dialogue themselves. But it creates the right amount of drama or tension at that point, more through intensity than through any kind of harmonic. And at the same time, there's not a lot of harmonic because it's also a monophonic score where you sometimes have double strings. But I really appreciated this idea of saying, "Wow, there's not actually a lot of monophonic instruments that have that power of nuance."
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's... It's interesting what you said about the frequencies and also… So, in the Tron film… I wanna go back and look at that now. So the synth elements are away from the dialogue, essentially?
Thomas Bangalter: Well, the synth elements are low in the range because all the medium synth element ideas that we had, or I had, they would hide the dialogue. So if you listen to it… Actually, there is no… the electronics in the way… they’re really in the low register. Yeah, the double bass. And somehow it's almost reinventing the wheel because I was like, "Okay, now I realize why 90% of orchestral film scores are mostly string-based.” Because there's this magic chemistry between strings and dialogue, and almost this kind of frequency curve where there's this ability to have dialogue and strings not in the way of these things. So it's always very depressing, actually, when you have all these ideas, and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna bring that." And you end up almost having to go back to a more traditional way of doing it. Because you're like, "Wow, the tradition is not just rules. It's sometimes, like, common sense. It's the idea of saying, ‘Okay, yeah, you know, we've tried that, and it doesn't work.”’
Devonté Hynes: The new ballet score you did, is that all electronic?
Thomas Bangalter: Yes. So, the previous ballet one, Mythologies, that I did was a symphonic score. I don't have any classical training like you do.
Devonté Hynes: I have minor.
Thomas Bangalter: Yes, but you play the cello. I play piano. My mother was a dancer, and I played piano with a teacher, which was the rehearsal piano player from the Paris Opera.
Devonté Hynes: Oh, wow.
Thomas Bangalter: And I did that from six years old to 11. At 11, I stopped. But after this kind of symphonic detour for that previous ballet here, I wanted to go back to electronic music and with a lot of inspiration from this Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis, that was an architect. And that was drawing symphonic scores with clusters and lines. And then, in the ‘80s, he developed those tools…A graphic tablet where you could draw music on an XY axis with a frequency and time and doing chromatic music, microtonal music and all kinds of things. And I've been experimenting with these tools. And for this process, I was like, "Wow, it was a ballet in Japan, with Damien Jalet, who is an amazing Belgian choreographer. He did the Romain Gavras Yung Lean music video with the dancer, which is so crazy. And Kohei Nawa, a Japanese visual artist, and they've been working on a ballet called Mirage. And the whole idea was going back to the era of musique concrète and experimentation, and really sonic research. But using these graphic tablets to create those sounds, which you don't know whether they're electronic or acoustic, you know? So having made electronic music and music for so long, at some point my listening was almost analytical where I could decompose anything. You know, like, “Oh, I know what synthesizer it is. Or I know what a drum machine is.” And so that's why it got me a little bit further from electronic music, where it feels like it doesn't gel or it's not the mystery anymore. And here, it was more about, okay, you know, with this tool, I can imagine…Not like synesthesia, but being in something where you can hear and picture, like impossible or new instruments that do not exist, almost like some weird… A thousand tubular bells, super high-pitched or drones or things. And to me, it was more... The whole thing is it's called Mirage. The perception was, “Is there a way to still create electronic textures that can surprise myself?” Because I'm always kind of a guinea pig of that.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, I really feel like because it… I really love it. I really love it. And it feels physical. You know, and I didn't know about the Xenakis, but it makes sense because it also made me think of Kaija Saariaho. You know, with these... Which is someone who I also never really know what it's being played on.
Thomas Bangalter: No, but I think that's the interesting mystery sometimes about electronics. Where you feel like, “Is there a way to not try to copy or model of reality but also to capture something that is organic and somehow that is an extension of reality?” And eventually, that is visual and creates more engagement in a mysterious way. It's very similar to film score as well, because, I don't know. I have a question for that, about The Invite, but when I did this score, I really did it specifically for this tableau. So everything was motivated and driven by these illusions and dancers and something very physical, with transformation on stage. Then after having done all of this process, it's only at that point that I kind of listened to it remotely from its function, and I kind of discovered new visions or new images from it. And I wanted to ask you, how for The Invite, especially when I spoke about this interaction with dialogue, how much of it was so precisely driven by the exact timing and the scenes you were looking at? Or if you were more kind of disconnected from it and then pasting it to a picture?
Devonté Hynes: You’re right. I start off disconnected just to almost get into the world of it. I’ll write like a larger piece of music, so I can find melodies and ideas, and sometimes even improvise, just to get my head in the place. Then I'll go to picture and be very, very, very precise. And maybe 15% are happy accidents that happen sometimes. You know, sometimes a piece of music coincides with a head turn or something like that. But for this, I felt like it had to be very precise. And I worked with an engineer called Alec Fellman, and we would be at the computer, and I'd be rewriting things. And then this cellist, Kirin [McElwain], who was incredible, really quick. And so we would then, in person, I would almost like rescore. Like having the music.
Thomas Bangalter: Did you play part of it before she performed it?
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Yeah.
Devonté Hynes: Great. Did anything make the cut or you-
Devonté Hynes: Yes. Like the parts where you're like, "What is that? That's me." But yeah, it's such a dialogue-heavy film. It was kind of... Yeah, I just felt like it had to be-
Thomas Bangalter: But that's what I love about the cello. I've got this story. We need a solo for a very sad scene in Tron, this kind of flashback scene. I actually remember that Mitchell Leib, who was the music executive at Disney, made the best studio comment ever for a scene like that, which we showed him. And he was like, "It's not sad enough." And he was completely right. And so it's not like, "Oh, all these theories and stuff.” And so we, we really put it to the… I think it's this “Adagio for Tron” bit in the album…
Devonté Hynes: Oh, yes.
Thomas Bangalter: …with the cello solo. And so we really trashed everything and redid it. And I was like, " Okay, the great thing about cello, especially for its range, is that it feels the… One of maybe my favorite expressive solo instruments without doing any kind of chords, and the violin can be like that, but the range of the violin is so limited. But at that point, it's too intense. And it doesn't feel like the range of emotion can be really… Because then it becomes almost a lamenting violin thing. There's this other thing also, which I love about symphonic instruments. Part of Daft Punk was working with electronic instruments, and it takes so much effort to bring soul to the sound of those synthesizers sometimes with harmonies and stuff. And what I love about symphonic instruments is that you can have an orchestra and you can say, "Okay, everybody play unison G and then everybody play that note,” and you've got goosebumps. And so there doesn't exist like that with electronic instruments. And what I love on that minimal aspect is that I think there's a moment in the film where there's just, like, a fifth with the…
Devonté Hynes: Yes.
Thomas Bangalter: …with the cello at the white point. So it's like a harmony, polyphony. It’s just like these two notes. It’s maybe with a Penelope Cruz shot or towards the end?
Devonté Hynes: Yes.
Thomas Bangalter: And that becomes super emotional, where after all that monophonic lines. It's just like [mimics sound] those two notes together almost like the birth of polyphony. It’s like, okay, then polyphony equals harmony. I mean, or duophony, you know? It’s the beginning of harmony, of these two elements that are in connection. And I was like, wow, having been such in a monophonic world for the whole part of the film, duophony happens, and it becomes really moving just by that thing. And that's what I love about minimalism. How, by using so little elements, the first steps of it, you know, we live in such a maximalist, saturated world. Then this homeopathic dosage of notes and things, it's almost an opportunity to reconnect. But-
Devonté Hynes: Something about the stillness. I thought about that a lot, too, in the film because in the film, there…I mean, the characters are very not still, you know? They are agitated and always kind of talking and stuff. And so towards the end, I liked... It was funny. Even me, just the person writing music, felt an excitement or a calmness to be able to land and breathe. I wanted to ask, for this new score, was it music first?
Thomas Bangalter: The ballet? No, no. Music second. So, no, Damien, the choreographer, and Kohei were workshopping in Kyoto. It's really interesting because it really reminded me of those special effects shops in the valley, in L.A., when we used to do the robot helmets and with all those special effects, you know? And animals and latex and pyrotechnics. And here they were really in his artist studio with the dancers, working on different techniques. A lot of the ballet works with this kind of oil on the body and glitter and, like, transformation and super interesting visceral elements of haze and smoke and almost creating clouds. And so they were doing all these techniques, almost in a lab and sending me, like, snippets of pictures, of videos. And I was in France. And it's funny because there's this moment in the ballet where there's glitter rains of colors, and it's all silent. And a lot of those harmonic and textural explorations on the record was just me trying to say, okay, what... Almost like a Foley artist. But, like, harmonic Foley. Where you feel, as a musician, I'm doing the Foley. This is like a silent film. And what can be the sound of those colorful glitter rains? And how can you turn... Almost as if we're going back to... We were saying now when I listen to it disconnected, I'm like, okay, I can envision a musician performing on a weird instrument. But at the time, I was actually trying to find the sound of what they could emit, this glitter, as if they were the instrument on the contact of when it goes on the bodies of the dancers. So I don't think I would have had most of these ideas if it was not for the evocative power of the ballet that I was watching.
Devonté Hynes: Was Mythologies the same?
Thomas Bangalter: No, Mythologies was music first.
Devonté Hynes: Okay.
Thomas Bangalter: So Mythologies was different because it was a... I mean, I'm not good enough, I think, and capable of being able to do a symphony score to picture, like, "Oh, yeah. I'll just have, like, a semiquaver between that dialogue line.” So, with Mythologies, the fun thing, I was totally tripping. I didn't know how to orchestrate, and I wanted to orchestrate. So for two years, I stopped… This was pretty much around lockdown, and I read all these orchestration treatises, Rimsky-Korsakov and Berlioz. And actually my favorite orchestration treatise is not an orchestration treatise. It's probably the Ravel orchestration of “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Mussorgsky. Because basically you have the original piano line, and then you have this orchestration under it, and you can just see the genius of just how Ravel is just turning what is just a simple piano. And the choices that he makes, and it works better than a thousand words. But yeah, for Mythologies, I basically wrote this entire ballet in my head. It was a commission, but the choreographer, Angelin [Preljocaj], had asked me to do it. And so I scored to this ballet that did not exist, and then I handed him the music, and then he choreographed a completely different ballet, which was his own. And this was a great surprise. But it's funny how it's the opposite: you do it with a picture and then, after you discover a new thing in your head, like in the second phase. And here, it was like, okay, it was a total fantasy, and then it was different. But for your scores, is it one or the other in the same way? Or how does that work?
Devonté Hynes: Sometimes. I mean, I find… Maybe you agree with this, there's been many different ways it's happened. Sometimes the film's half finished, and there's a lot of temp, or maybe I've sent things. But I think I prefer either, or because I think you can then fully commit to the fact that it's music first. You can kind of go in almost in this free way. But also, when it exists already, I also find that quite freeing in a weird-
Thomas Bangalter: It really depends how precise it needs to be. I feel that I agree, but I feel there's something a little bit intimidating about both, you know? There's this level of intimidation. Where you have nothing, it's a bit intimidating. It's like, “Okay, where do I start? Actually, this is a good song. Oh, I could put it on this movie.” And it's like, “Oh, no, why don't I keep it for myself?” And then, on the other hand, when you have this finished cut… I always think sometimes directors are approaching me, and they've worked for years on a project, and they have rewrites, and there's… Cinema is teamwork, like hundreds of people working on something for so many… And they're like, "Okay, this is the cut, and we need a score in like two months." And to me, that's probably the most intimidating, even though there... But at the same time, when you have a great film, and then you like to put any kind of music on it and say, "Okay, I feel I'm already there in some way." But I would have been very intimidated with the The Invite process probably because of the precise nature of it.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Yeah. There was definitely a moment where I thought, “What have I got myself into?” I don't know. Yeah, scoring is an interesting thing. How long after the Tron process did you start making music again? Or was it not so detached, or was it continuous, or…
Thomas Bangalter: I think it was a weird commitment, the Tron thing, because it was the first foray into orchestral music. We were lucky not to have any temp music because we were early in the process, but at the same time, it was almost a poison, like a trap where you're lucky, but basically it's like “Hotel California,” you can check in anytime you want, but you can never leave. Because there was this thing where it's like, okay, so here we're coming; the film hasn't even started. We're big fans of the original Steven Lisberger film. And we have this opportunity to really set the tone. The director, Joe [Kosinski], already asked us for some music even before starting editing. And even though it was a big studio film, there's this legal editing window before the director shows it to the studio. And we're completely in the process with the director, doing all of these early things. But it almost felt, I mean… We ended up working a year and a half on this project that became almost like a maze where, “How are we gonna get out of being able to reach the end of this narrative maze?” I mean, it was really from a narrative and emotional perspective. And it's funny you mentioned opera for The Invite because that was really… Maybe Olivia has an operatic face that inspires that. But looking at Jeff Bridges, you know, in this kind of grand thing, there was this thing, okay, it's gonna be like a very kind of grand presentation. But the interesting thing is, after this process, being really in charge of a project of that scale with so many musicians, somehow I felt confident enough and excited to work with other musicians for other projects after. So the benefit of the Tron score, on a very personal creative level, was how we got from Tron to Random Access Memories because we're like… Before Tron, all the music we had made was just the two of us in my bedroom, and in a very super intimate level, not letting anyone into the process, even until it's mastered. And then, even if it's mixed and mastered, showing it to the record label or the people and friends and family. And here, because the Tron was already this kind of collaborative process, like film work, that's what Random Access Memories was. I really consider that Random Access Memories was a film without cameras, basically, the entire process of it. And somehow, at the same time, Tron happened in the middle of this process. So we had made demos in the studio in Paris at Gang in 2008 and 2009 after the Pyramid. And I was not happy with the sound of all these demos, and I think there were some kind of cool grooves, but I was like saying to Guy-Man, "We need to trash everything production-wise." And then we said, "Oh, stop. We can be part of our childhood fantasy of scoring Tron." And then, after the Tron thing, there were all these demos, and was like, maybe we can stay in L.A. and have these amazing session musicians and turn it into something with this discovery about what I was telling you about the magic of human beings performing and how sometimes, when you press a synth key, it doesn't move easily, and even less than on than on a laptop or a computer with that process. But at the same time, there was not a pause there. To me, the pause was after Random Access Memories, which was… A song like “Touch,” with Paul Williams, had 250 tracks on Pro Tools. It was a 70-channel board Neve, and we had to divide it into three parts to be able to mix it. And so after that, I remember I was literally, for two years, I had one piano with a GoPro that I mounted. I didn't touch one synthesizer. I didn't open any machines and I just pressed record because I tend to have a hard time deciphering it. I mean, it's actually good advice for people: If you play and improvise and stuff, to find almost like a voice note of ideas on the piano. But then after, you're like, "Okay, what was this chord?” And then with this, you add all these QuickTime clips of just looking down, and you have your fingers. And actually, you can open them and then cut and paste-
Devonté Hynes: Oh, that's brilliant. That's really good.
Thomas Bangalter: Probably, you can do it with many different instruments.
Devonté Hynes: Oh, that's great. Just going back to when you said about “Touch”, how many tracks?
Thomas Bangalter: 250.
Devonté Hynes: Wow. And that was mixed in at the desks?
Thomas Bangalter: They’re not playing at the same time. At the same time, there's probably around 70 tracks, you know? Yeah. Because, I mean, you gotta understand that Homework and Discovery were mixed on these eight channel, small Mackie desks. So four mono, four stereo, like, 12 channels. And that's as much as I can handle in terms of mixing myself. But here, I mean, at that point, all this thing about this record was like, “Okay, I'm never gonna do a record in that process again.” Because it's almost like you lose half of your brain cells in the process. So that's why there's really this admiration that I have for going back to minimalism, and when I see a score that you did like that for The Invite, which is just one instrument and not a polyphonic one, basically. With monophonic, I'm like, "Wow, that's actually a really minimal and radical approach that I find." And at the same time, as you were explaining earlier, I think, you know, where you're like, "Oh, there's a lot of time where I was like, okay, how am I gonna be able to get there?" But there's one thing that's obvious. It's easier when the film is good as well.
Devonté Hynes: Yes, that is a big…
Thomas Bangalter: Because you feel with music sometimes… I feel music is here to help that process. But I feel here that there's a ...When I watched the film a couple of days ago, I was like, "Okay, that's probably one reason why you were able to succeed with so little elements, is the fact that it works.”
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That reminds me of…I remember, I mean, when would this be? I remember, like, seven years ago or so, I was scoring a film, and I was relatively new to scoring. And there was a scene, you know, there's always that one scene where I had to score over and over and over again, a million times.
Thomas Bangalter: Was it because you didn't like it, or because it was not working for filmmakers?
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, it wasn't working for the filmmakers. And a friend of mine that is a producer that works in film, and I was speaking to them about it, and I was losing my mind at this point. And they told me that it's because the scene doesn't work. So it's like you're never gonna do it, you know?
Thomas Bangalter: But that's the thing that I find is really hard about that, it's almost like using music as a patch, as a band-aid. Like “You're gonna make that work.” It's really complicated sometimes.
Devonté Hynes: So you just screened the 20th anniversary of Electroma?
Thomas Bangalter: Yes, for the Tribeca Film Festival. We did Electroma in 2006 that I co-directed, and I was the cinematographer and operated-
Devonté Hynes: I love that film.
Thomas Bangalter: Thank you. We had 35-millimeter film prints. But we never had a restoration process or a DCP to really be able to show it 20 years later. And so there were these online copies there, but just bad telecine and not something proper. So the whole process was really to go back to photochem in the lab and to get as close as possible to the color of the emotion of the 35 millimeter print. Going back and forth to really match every shot. Like, you would see where there was the Kodak Vision Premier print. And we screened it yesterday, and the film obviously resonated in such a different way. For Electroma, at some point, I stopped making music for two years and wanted to study cinematography. To try to develop a relationship in the same way I had done with drum machines and synthesizers, and doing it with a 35-millimeter camera. And saying, "Oh, you know, an experiment." And so, that era for me and that movie is really linked to a very deep connection with my love of cinematography.
Devonté Hynes: Amazing. How, how long did it take to shoot?
Thomas Bangalter: 11 days. So, the first shoot was five days for what was supposed to be a music video. We were shooting in the desert, and we had runners going to L.A. for the dailies at that time. So it was not like, "Oh, you know, here's the memory card." Three days in, we received the first dailies. We looked at it and were like, "Wow, let's make a midnight feature.” Okay, it was supposed to be a “Human After All” music video and somehow we’ve got to turn a three-minute music video into an hour and 20-minute film. That's probably why people think it's so long and boring, because nothing happened because we're already, like, experimenting with the stretching time to the max, you know?
Devonté Hynes: Must feel very different looking at it now.
Thomas Bangalter: It's funny because I've been doing interviews these last few days or weeks, and people ask me about the eclectic diversity of projects from Daft Punk to symphonic stuff, to abstract electronics. And actually, I must say how much I love your music, and I actually love the range of what you do from the score stuff to your songs to vocals. This morning, listening to the “Essex_Honey.mp3”. It’s so, so cool, you know-
Devonté Hynes: Thank you.
Thomas Bangalter: This kind of ravy thing. But what I love, because it feels like it's really speaking to me, almost as the approach… Where sometimes it feels like you're doing a song or a piece of music and that defines you, you know? Like, okay, “This is what I am.”
Devonté Hynes: Yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: And, I think sometimes it's a bit limiting, almost. But, what I love is that in fact, and I think it's the same for me, but when I listen to music, I can obviously listen to “Essex_Honey.mp3” then listen to Fields and then it's the range and the space between those two pieces of music that I find are defining yourself more than the music itself. Almost because it’s just an ability to kind of take the walls and just spread them more than being almost defined by just a work.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think, yeah, it feels like it's very similar. I feel like that's-
Thomas Bangalter: Cool. Cool.
Devonté Hynes: How you operate.
Thomas Bangalter: Yeah, because I like contrast. Yeah. And I like the idea of you take a running and scratching or a rave track or techno music and then, you know, “Touch,” you were speaking about “Touch.” It can’t get more different than that. And, it's that range almost... I don't know if it's almost provocative or saying that I love this coexistence of avant-garde and more traditional forms, and modern things, and ancient things and retrofuturism. And somehow, I think, in your music I can... I mean, it's a really good example here, the fact of speaking. Again, I was mentioning “Essex_Honey.mp3,” which is this super freeform, demo-ish array thing. And then you're doing this cello score like very pure for this film, you know? So, it feels really inspiring to not stay as artists in the box that either the outside puts you in, or that sometimes you deliberately go and say, "Okay, this is… I started to do that, and this is how people see me, and then I'm gonna continue because I'm encouraged to do so.”
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, because I always feel that… I always think about this thing which is like the human filter. And I think that, a genuine curiosity that… Not to call other people's curiosities disingenuous, but I feel like a curiosity that is almost… How can I explain? Has gotten to someone almost by accident or by just living in various tastes, not necessarily through maybe a dominant aesthetics and culture or something, but a curiosity. I always feel like that is the thing that ties people's work together. Like, when I'm a fan of people who have… If you were to lay down all the things they did in a row and maybe they look extreme when they're put together, it's like the thread is this curiosity.
Thomas Bangalter: I completely agree. I think not only... I mean, I think we're on the same page.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: So I feel there's something else also in this very highly algorithmic world right now, which is based on recommendations and predictability. I feel that curiosity level is really bringing this sense of unpredictability.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah.
Thomas Bangalter: So I think it's vital right now as human beings, to focus and especially nowadays on the unpredictable nature of ourselves from a very genuine and spontaneous level. Not just, like, to be unpredictable for unpredictable. But so that's the first thing. And then the second thing, I really realized this was maybe one of the last reasons to hack the system in some way, this algorithmic system. When Mythologies was released on streaming platforms, I started to see when you're listening to the song and then after it says, "Oh, you've just listened to that song, you might want to listen to Justice or Procopio." And how it's like creating those links. You know, which do not exist anymore, on some level. Obviously, I really believe that eclecticism is in every audience, but it's almost a need to classify things and to put them in boxes. And so it feels like there's a benefit to surprise yourself as an artist and to get out of your comfort zone. Because at least it's creating those new connections in some way. Well, Dev, it was great speaking to you.
Devonté Hynes: Yeah, same.
Thomas Bangalter: I'm really excited to see where your curiosity takes you next.
Devonté Hynes: Thank you, likewise.