Alive 2007

It's a rare breed of dance artist capable of putting on a live show that inspires not just motion and emotion in an audience, but genuine, flat-out awe. Alive 2007, however, is documentary evidence that Daft Punk--aka Parisian robo-men Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo--now join the ranks of Kraftwerk and Underworld in live dance music's upper echelons. Recoded at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in June 2007, it finds Daft Punk pull the bolts off their back catalogue and get busy with the circuitry, rewiring it into a rolling montage that's as deviously complex as it is flat-out crowd-pleasing. Affairs commence with the unmistakable one-note guitar fanfare of "Robot Rock", but halfway though, Daft Punk get busy with their onstage tech-mountain, splicing in snatches of the pounding "Oh Yeah" before dropping back to the riffs. Deeper in, tracks flow together, vocal hooks escape from their sockets and skitter off through the mix--and by the time of the epic climax, a triumphant cut-and-shut of "Superheroes", "Human After All", and "Rock `n' Roll", you've forgotten where the joins ever sat. It's a decade of Daft Punk hits, dismantled and masterfully reassembled in front of your eyes. --Louis Pattison