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MUSIC

Daft Punk to unveil never-heard song where it all began

The music of pioneering French electronic duo Daft Punk will resound on Thursday through Paris' Centre Pompidou, as a never-released track is unveiled at the spot where their love affair with the genre began.

Daft Punk to unveil never-heard song where it all began
Recording artists Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (L) and Thomas Bangalter, better known as Daft Punk. Photo by Jason Merritt / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

Dubbed Infinity Repeating, the tune was recorded as the robot-helmeted pair were working on their 2013 album Random Access Memories but it was left on the cutting room floor in favour of others like global mega-hit Get Lucky.

Two years after the group broke up for good and ten years after that album’s release, fans of their pop, funk and disco-infused sound can head to the central Paris modern art museum to discover the new track.

Entry is free on a first-come first-served basis.

Featuring the voice of The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, the demo and its accompanying video will be played at “ultra-high-fidelity” for 150 people in a gallery space, as well as in a 350-seat cinema auditorium and on a giant screen in the Centre Pompidou atrium.

The Pompidou was the jumping-off point for Daft Punk’s leap into electronica, as the teenaged Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo attended a 1992 rave there that opened their eyes to machine music’s possibilities.

“The first rave we went to was on the roof” of the Pompidou… “We discovered a different kind of music, as well as an energy, with people dancing to songs they didn’t know,” Bangalter said in a 2009 podcast.

“We said to ourselves there was something we could do with electronic music”.

Their new name was appropriated from a scathing review of their guitar-based band Darlin’ in British magazine Melody Maker.

Infinity Repeating forms part of 35 minutes of unheard material included on a new release Friday of Random Access Memories – Daft Punk’s fourth and final studio album that won five Grammy awards.

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CULTURE

Court upholds ban on French rapper accused of ‘defending terrorism’

A French court has upheld a ban on a concert by a French rapper accused of anti-Semitism and "defending terrorism", just hours before he was due on stage.

Court upholds ban on French rapper accused of 'defending terrorism'

Freeze Corleone, whose real name is Issa Lorenzo Diakhate, was due to play in the northern city of Lille on Thursday evening and in Lyon on Saturday, but authorities in each city had banned the concerts.

A Lille court rejected a last-minute attempt by the rapper to overturn the Lille ban. No ruling has yet been made about the Lyon concert.

The 31-year-old artist has faced repeated criticism since 2020 when he compared himself to Adolf Hitler in his debut album and many accused him of anti-Semitism.

Last week, he released a new song in which he compares himself to a truck, in what some people have seen as a reference to the 2016 Nice terror attack that killed 86 people.

The lyrics prompted prosecutors in the Mediterranean city to open an investigation over him allegedly “defending terrorism”.

Corleone on Thursday morning sent a lawyer to an administrative court in Lille just hours ahead of the cancelled performance.

“They’re trying to smear the artist, disparately sampling comments that might shock the bourgeoisie,” lawyer Sanjay Mirabeau said.

Another lawyer was due to appear in another court in Lyon.

In Corleone’s latest single “Haaland”, a duo with German rapper Luciano, lyrics include: “I arrive in rap like a truck that bombs hard on the…”

His lawyer argued in court that the sentence was open-ended and could mean any number of things, and said the offending song was not in the line-up for the Lille concert.

Fans of the rapper who had bought tickets for the concert huddled in the back of the courtroom.

And some fans gathered at the Zenith concert hall in Lille in the evening, vainly hoping the concert would go ahead.

Corleone in 2020 caused a stir after the release of his debut album “LMF”.

In his lyrics, he said that he arrived “determined like Adolf in the 1930s”, that he doesn’t “give a damn about the Shoah”, or Holocaust.

The album also contained references to popular conspiracy theories.

Corleone, whose father is Senegalese and mother Italian, was born on the outskirts of Paris but has also lived in Canada and in Dakar.

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