Daft Punk - BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix 02.03.1997

About the Artist

March 1997. Homework was two months old, nobody had seen the helmets yet, and Daft Punk sat down for the only Essential Mix they would ever record. Two hours of Chicago ghetto house, Bangalter's own Roule twelve-inches, a Martin Luther King speech, a Ween record and a preacher on white label. Everything they became is already here, unguarded and without a pose. This recording is here because it holds the sound of a record before anyone knows what it will turn into.

Broadcast on 2 March 1997 on BBC Radio 1. The Essential Mix is a format that takes its guests seriously and gives them two hours without conditions, and its editors have proven across decades that they know who to book and when: in the weeks around this mix, Grooverider and Paul van Dyk were on the schedule. It opens with Wdpk Essential Intro, a track Daft Punk produced specifically for the broadcast, and moves through Paul Johnson, Armand Van Helden, Parris Mitchell, DJ Funk, Cajmere and DJ Deeon, through Thomas Bangalter's Spinal Beats and Spinal Scratch, to Around The World in the Motorbass Mix and a closing cut from Kenny Dixon Jr. 32 tracks, no regard for genre borders. The BBC rebroadcast it as a Classic in 2020.