Daft Punk

Two of the year’s most breathtaking and lasting musical events came not from the live stage, blogs, archive vaults, Glee or Kanye West, but from the silver screen. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s eerie score for The Social Network and Daft Punk’s bold TRON: Legacy opus are crucial elements to the films’ successes—some might say the only reason, beyond FX, to investigate the latter.

Oddly, the Facebook flick’s skittering beats and miniature machine works better simulate the feeling of living inside a computer chip. Daft Punk goes for something more traditionally cinematic—booming orchestras, motifs and dynamic shifts from the subtle to the bombastic. If you’re looking for pulsing club beats and samples of obscure disco cuts, you’ll have to wait another half decade for the faux robots to rear their motorcycle helmets.

The duo’s jump into movies was inevitable, considering the French taste makers have always been heavily influenced by electronic pioneers with seminal soundtracks: Giorgio Moroder (Midnight Express), Vangelis (Blade Runner), Tangerine Dream (Sorcerer), etc. Those once-alien keyboard sounds from the late ’70s and early ’80s mingle here with tranquil, romantic strains of Debussy and Strauss. The album, best listened to as a whole movement, offers a sublime moment, sincerely titled “Adagio for TRON.” For that alone, Daft Punk will remain eternally cool.

Beyond the swell and ebb of sawing strings, the timpani thunder and deep bass blasts, there are awesome pieces of electro fury. “End of Line” and “The Game Has Changed” squelch and crackle with digital decay. “Derezzed” and the closing credits theme show the enigmatic Parisians can still bend and stretch Korg blurps better than anyone. But it’s the unexpectedly mellow and moving compositions that prove these guys are more than clever crate diggers in killer costumes.

• More album reviews
• More Music articles