Daft Punk :: Tron: Legacy . Soundtrack Review

With their faces obscured with heavy robot helmets, their whirring fingers releasing what could be the song of mechanical angels, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter appear like deities of the future.

Many a mere mortal fan has questioned, I’m sure, why these Robot Gods were placed among us. This year, the answer became abundantly clear: Daft Punk were put on Earth to score Tron: Legacy.

It’s hard to think of a more apt pairing. Shared is their vision of robots subsisting in a surreal, technologic realm. Shared is their cult status, both pioneers of their genres. Daft Punk was prominent in the shaping of 90s electronica; the original Tron whose sequel we receive offered an early example of the Robot-Blockbuster, which though unpopular on release in 1982, has grown a retrospective infamy. Shared, then, are vast and (logically) overlapping fan-bases. So the anticipation that this score generated was, naturally, insane.

Does it live up to these expectations? It’s difficult to say.

I guess the first thing to note is that Daft Punk never intended it to sound like, well, Daft Punk. “We knew from the start that we were never going to do this film score with two synthesisers and a drum machine”, Bangalter said. The substitute? An 85-piece chamber orchestra. Naturally. It was certainly a brave move for the Robot Gods, to whom classical music would generally be considered antithetical. But in typical Daft Punk fashion, it worked. They guide the grandiose strings of the classical tracks with agility, and precision. The sound is suitably rich for the action on screen; it’s all very tense and swelling and dramatic. It fits, it works, it sounds exactly like a film score should. But that’s the thing: these classical tracks could be the work of anyone.

The “Daft Punk” stamp adorns only the buzzing electronic tracks, and only here do we see a sound that’s divergent, atypical. These are the engrossing tracks, as they whine and whir and grind to solitary pulsating synths. You feel kind of bad admitting that these are the score’s finest moments, when the duo have tried so hard to stretch beyond their standard sound. But frankly, it’s their specialty because here they offer something special.

Tracks like “Derezzed”, “End of Line” and “Tron: Legacy (End Titles)” could be appreciated like any Daft Punk hit, discrete from their cinematic context. They’re fast, they’re tense and catchy, too. They’re Daft Punk at their finest.

But these are the only tracks that can really stand alone, and here we reach the major problem with evaluating this score. Which is that it is exactly that: a score. Not a soundtrack, a score. Since each note, string or melody coincides with a precise moment unfolding onscreen, without the film, something is always missing. While a classical interlude might be perfect in its scene, in the context of your living room, it’s not going to have the same transfixing quality. So the question is whether people will enjoy this album on its own, if there’s enough to keep listeners interested.

But evaluated as a score, in conjunction with the film, Daft Punk deserves commending. It may be ironic that the Robot Gods give us less electronics than Wendy Carlos did, with the original Tron score. But where they do grant us the gift of synth, it’s brilliant, and compensates for the competent-but-not-phenomenal classical offerings. I guess we’ve just come to equate “Daft Punk” with “radical” and “pioneering”, and while this score may not be entirely either of those, it should still be applauded as a proficient effort. With the inspiration of composers like Vangelis and John Williams palpable, the score isn’t groundbreaking, but it works. So thank you, Robot Gods, you’ve done it again.

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7/10 Stars.

Highlights :: “Derezzed”, “End of Line”, “Tron: Legacy (End Titles)”