Album review: Daft Punk, 'Tron: Legacy' soundtrack
2.5 stars (out of 4)
German electro-pop pioneers Kraftwerk made explicit the notion of men melding with their machines to create the music of the future. As heirs to that tradition, French duo Daft Punk have added a deep love of house music and their own futuristic visual pizzazz. If electronic music can be said to have a superstar “band,” Daft Punk is it. They’re in many ways the perfect choice to compose the soundtrack for the long-awaited sequel to Disney’s “Tron” franchise.
In the original 1982 movie, a programmer infiltrates the digital world with Wendy Carlos’ electro-symphonic soundtrack as a backdrop. On the “Tron: Legacy” soundtrack, Daft Punk loosely follow Carlos’ blueprint, blending their synthesizers with an 85-piece orchestra. The result is an album unlike anything Daft Punk has created, for better or worse.
The duo of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are essentially minimalists, rarely gussying up their lean dance tracks with anything more than absolutely necessary. “Tron: Legacy,” on the other hand, is big, grandiose, often foreboding. When the duo forsakes groove and focuses on crafting stately, layered melodies, they sound less like innovators and more like film-score novices, which they are. Next to the sinister genius of John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” or Vangelis’ “Blade Runner,” the “Tron” soundtrack’s weakest parts tend to sound blandly overstuffed, as if Homem-Christo and Bangalter were reluctant not to use all the instrumental artillery put at their disposal.
They’re best when they find the sweet spot between electro-punk and pomp. Synthesizers spiderwalk over lean, whip-crack beats on “Derezzed.” “Rinzler” pulses with anticipation as strings and tympani rev it into overdrive. Orchestral flourishes punctuate a python-like groove on the title song – a near-perfect realization of what Daft Punk must have had in mind when they signed on to this project. It’s a hint of what may come, a bridge to something greater than this first, tentative attempt at a more ornate sound.
greg@gregkot.com