“Listening 2 Daft Punk” by @switchedonpop is a 4-part podcast series that explores and celebrates the French duo’s full length studio albums, and asks where does the human end and the machine begin?

For me, Daft Punk sits on a high nostalgic pedestal, conjuring up late night drives with “Veridis Quo”, “Faster Better, Stronger” house parties, and long hours working listening to full albums. Even as my friends and I were huge fans of emo pop and hardcore, Daft Punk broke through these genres with elegant, moving and unique, robot vocal dance music.

It had been a while since I’d done a deep listen, this podcast series was a nice surprise taking an amazing journey through each album, exploring the musical techniques, influences, stories and cultural context. Familiar songs are dissected to reveal the synthesizers and mind-blowing original samples used to create the songs. The Robot Vocals are analyzed in their source, evolution and meaning, ultimately asking if they are more Robot or Human?

The podcast series inspired me to create an animated motion piece featuring Daft Punk being subjected to analysis in a stylized medical lab. It was created with Maxon Cinema4D and RedShift renderer.