The feeling of, it’s too good to be true and then the lingering afterword taste of reality tinged with bitter aspiration for new material from the robotic duo of Daft Punk not met, really put a damper a few days ago when Pitchfork revealed that there was no ‘new’ Daft Punk single dropping anytime soon. But did everyone get the news or even believe it? Definitely not, there are countless threads, blog posts, facebook/twitter/tumblr posts about the single still coming out even with official cover art from original Daft Punk logo designer Serge Nicolas.
Was there really a ‘new’ Daft Punk single entitled “Renoma Street” dropping on July 21st? Hit the break to find out how this whole debacle got started and how it morphed into a monster sized game of ‘internet telephone’ where rumors are considered fact and bloggers play right along lending credence to the false.
How any allusion to two robots turns into mass hysteria
Have you ever noticed? For (almost) five years, our facetious writers have taken the habit of slipping a few private jokes inside the magazine, spotted on the edge, the subheads or even in the journalists’ signatures. While we were putting our june issue to bed in an (always) hysterical atmosphere, we decided to slip a mysterious track in our playlist: Daft Punk’s “Renoma Street”. A pure creation, making fun of all the madness surrounding every (mainly false) news concerning the two robots.On Twitter, the rumor expanded.
And what was meant to happen happened. Five days after the magazine came out, on the 11th of june, the existence of this supposed new Guy Man & Thomas track invaded the internet. A few screenshots from our playlist were posted on Twitter, competing with surrounding the Trieweiler story. The craziest hypothesis were evoked. Thedafthouse blog even mentioned a crazy plot : if the sleeve of our Mix CD was designed by Serge Nicolas, the man who created the Daft Punk logo, it had to mean that “Renoma Street” was true. Even better, a little joker went farer by publishing on Soundcloud a 30-seconds long trailer of the track . Everything got crazier and crazier. The electronic world went mad: in two days there were more than 3000 references on Google related to our “hit”. When our chief editor tweeted about his (well deserved) holidays on the 21st of July, it even lead people to think it was the release date of the new Daft Punk album.From one fake to another, the internet got carried away
The rumor kept going around, without any of those internet users trying to verify the information by contacting us. Actually we received ONE mail from the Frenchtouchinfo webzine, not asking if the track existed, just wanting to know if “Renoma Street” was to appear on our next CD. To assess the story: the announcement of a fake track in Tsugi led to the creation of an even faker track and a fake release date. The social networks are a wonderful tool where everyone makes dreams come (almost) true without asking any question. Our little joke ended up making the headlines of the very serious Fact Mag, who, AFTER putting the info online, contacted us to know if the info was true. Shouldn’t we verify our information before we publish them? We told them we would reveal the truth on our next issue. It made them think that the track might be on our next CD. Of course our fellow music journalists, fearing to be late announcing the burning info, followed the way. Especially the nme.com who, without asking us, proudly announced : “Tsugi Mag said that the track “Renoma Street”, the name of a Parisian café, is to be released 7/21”. Where did they see that? Our little magazine had its warholian finest hour. Only Pitchfork didn’t fall for it, sharply affirming everything was wrong. They probably were the only ones who asked Daft Punk’s circle. Now if Daft Punk wants to release “Renoma Street” on the 21st of July, we wouldn’t mind. They have to know now how expected they are.
Read the original french article at www.tsugi.fr
So at the end of the day, TSUGI wanted to play a joke sell magazines with the hysteria surrounding a Daft Punk rumor and the internuts went ‘nuts’ giving credence to the false without checking the facts. The idea that “We must be first to post ANYTHING” bit everyone in the fleshy part of the human body that one sits on. I guess it snowballed ever since Nile Rodgers lips got to talking earlier this year, American songwriter Paul Williams stating that he’s in on the act too and when legendary Italian producer Giorgio Moroder revealed he too had been working on the album. We all hoped too much and gave a blind eye to TSUGI’s little practical joke.
Lets all just hold hands now, cry and chill on spreading rumors (dry snitching!?). Daft Punk will release a record when they are ready. Period, point blank! There is a ton of Daft Punk material to listen to already, over ten actually released albums/remix albums/live albums. So listen to those, do a little google search, dig around find some Essential Mixes, solo projects, compilations, remixes and really learn to love the group even more until a new record really is properly released, don’t worry Daft Punk was around before most even listened to house music EDM and they will still be at the end of the day.
