Julian Casablancas Reveals Second Daft Punk Collab

Last year, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas made a vocoder-driven cameo on Daft Punk‘s “Instant Crush,” a New Wave stunner from the band’s acclaimed LP Random Access Memories. Now, the singer has said that there’s another collaboration from the two parties lingering in the vaults: “There is another Daft Punk song that we worked on that was cool,” Casablancas says in a new interview with Chilean news outlet Cooperativa. “Maybe I’ll get those guys. . . we can do that one day soon, finish it.”

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Casablancas was in Chile performing songs from his new solo project (which features backing band the Voidz). According to NME (via Mexican publication La Tercera), the singer compared the upcoming LP’s disparate sounds to acts like hardcore punks Black Flag and electronic artist Sébastien Tellier: “There are 45 different things that I’d like to do,” he says. “I do not like hearing the same genre for three songs in a row.” In the Cooperativa interview, he noted the influence of world music, “modern classical” and jazz on his songwriting, noting that he’s trying to “bridge the gap” between various genres. 

But in spite of his adventurous new approach, Casablancas still has unfinished business with his most famous band. In the Chilean interview, he says the quintet are booking “a couple [of] shows,” and in the NME story, he notes that they’re aiming to record “a couple of songs.” First and foremost, however, he wants to focus on improving the band’s overall vibe and build an atmosphere of friendship.

“I want to be friends with the Strokes,” he told Cooperativa, before interrupting himself. “We are friends, you know what I mean? Just to make it work – from just sitting down and having coffee and hanging out to being on-stage and performing as a unit. Just have it all be positive friend vibes. That’s the thing that brings us together, and then we do some Strokes stuff, too.”

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