Daft Punk say goodbye with an eight-minute film and no words

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo had not released an album since Random Access Memories in 2013, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year and gave them the biggest hit of their career in Get Lucky. They had not toured since 2007. Rumours of new music surfaced every year and every year came to nothing.

The announcement, when it came, was an excerpt from their own 2006 film Electroma. Two robots in leather jackets walk through the desert; one stops, turns its back to the other, and its companion flips a switch on its spine. A countdown begins. The robot walks away and explodes. The survivor keeps walking towards the horizon, and the film ends on the two helmets and the dates 1993 to 2021, over the choir section of Touch. The video was eight minutes long and contained not a single spoken word. Their publicist confirmed the split and gave no reason.

It was watched tens of millions of times within days, and it was in keeping with everything the duo had done since they first hid their faces: the exit was staged as carefully as the music. Bangalter has since released orchestral work under his own name and has said he did not want to spend the rest of his life as a robot.