Daft Punk: Tron Legacy

By Michael Lopez Tue., Dec. 7 2010 at 8:46 AM

Categories: Review Roundup

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Daft Punk - Tron Legacy

The wait is finally over: Daft Punk's latest album, the soundtrack/film score Tron Legacy has finally hit store shelves. Although it leaked on the Internet two weeks ago, anticipation is still obsessively high for this album. Not only are Daft Punk fans teeming for new material, but those dedicated Tron fans will take all they can get if it means they are closer to seeing the much-anticipated Tron sequel.

No, this album is not a thumping, ode-to-late-1990s-techno banger, as the kids say. Tron Legacy is, first and foremost, a film score. It is Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Cristo trying to weave a narrative with an 85-piece orchestra. There is a clear electronic influence over the soundtrack, but Bangalter knew from the start that they couldn't make this film score with just "two synthesizers and a drum machine." What comes forth, then, is an inspired effort -- one that true Daft Punk fans will grow to appreciate.

What the critics are saying:

The Telegraph: But underneath the conventional, foreboding codas, there beats the identifiably mentronomically futuristic sound of the duo. Particularly on the aptly titled The Game has Changed, menacingly industrial snares and hisses flare up against a nervously sawing string section in the perfect aural approximation of a struggle between human and computer life.

NME: The results, of course, sound exactly like you'd imagine Daft Punk going classical would do (which is no guarantee that what you expect is actually going to work). The brilliance here is how seamlessly they weave the dynamics of the dancefloor in with the blueprint theatrics of a soundtrack.

Paste Magazine: Fortunately Tron:Legacy is, amazingly, the duo's best work in years, going all the way back to their acclaimed 2001 breakthrough, Discovery. There's not much point in differentiating the tracks since all 22 pieces flow almost seamlessly with the same textural template: orchestral arrangements (heavy on the woodwinds) augmented with their trademark, gloriously recorded sequenced synthesizers.

Spin: Although the Daftest and most frantic interlude, "Derezzed," is nearly its shortest, the entire work sustains an uninterrupted sense of gloom and paranoia that makes this Disney's darkest achievement since the shooting of Bambi's mom.

Tron Legacy is out now via Walt Disney Records.

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