Getting the French electronica experts of Daft Punk to open up about what music they're listening to these days is no mean feat. The duo — Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo — like to keep their cards close to their vests, as evidenced by the signature robot helmets that obscure their real identities and without which Daft Punk is never publicly seen.

Although the group launched its own genre with its mash-up of acid house, heavy metal, disco and funk, the Daft dudes are quick to tell you that they are not listening to Parisian-heavy house music these days, spurning the music created by their multi-hyphenate former manager Busy P and all output by his influential Ed Banger record label. “Jazz men don't only listen to jazz,” Bangalter wryly noted in a rare interview with The Times' Pop & Hiss blog.

Added De Homem-Christo: “We consciously tend to listen to stuff that is further than what we do. We listen to Bach.”

In a surprise move that has wide-reaching implications for the local live music scene, Brian Murphy, former chairman of Southern California music for Live Nation, the country’s top concert promoter, has jumped ship to become West Coast president for AEG Live — Live Nation’s strongest competitor.

“It was the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make in business,” Murphy said in an exclusive interview with The Times. “There are employees I’m leaving who have been with me for 20 years. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’m an L.A. guy, and AEG Live is an L.A.-centric company.”

One of the most respected promoters in the American concert industry — and a pillar of the SoCal scene, the country’s most competitive live music market — Murphy has worked closely with a Who’s Who of pop music’s biggest touring acts: U2, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica among them.

Rick Mueller will remain in place as president of Live Nation’s California division.

Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane has been committed to a mental facility after being deemed unfit to attend a probation hearing.

In a Fulton County, Ga., courtroom Monday, the MC (government name: Radric Davis) filed a special plea of mental incompetence, claiming he was in no state to fight prosecutors’ efforts to revoke his probation, TMZ.com reported.

In the plea, Gucci, 30, asserted that he was “unable to go forward and/or intelligently participate in the probation revocation hearing.”

The trap rapper was ordered into custody by a judge and committed to a mental health treatment facility where his condition was  being evaluated.

His commitment is the latest setback for Gucci Mane. Despite critical props and growing fame (thanks to the No. 4 debut of his September album “The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted”), he has run afoul of the law several times, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporting that the performer has been incarcerated in Fulton County “at least five times since 2005.”

In November, Gucci was arrested in Atlanta after police said he resistied arrest during a traffic stop. Officers said they used pepper spray on him after he assaulted another person during an argument. Charges of interference with government property, obstruction of officers, reckless driving and other counts, however, were eventually dropped. In May, Gucci Mane was released from an Atlanta jail after serving six months for violating probation on an assault charge.

Last month, another once prominent rapper, DMX, was also ordered into a mental health facility as a result of an “undiagnosed” mental condition.

-- Chris Lee

Photo: Swizz Beatz (left) and Gucci Mane perform during the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards on Oct. 2 in Atlanta. Credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images.

The performer might be concentrating more on his acting career than singing right now, but he's still plugged into music — N.E.R.D and Kings of Leon are current favorites.

Just because Justin Timberlake is on indefinite hiatus from recording and performing music (in order to focus on stardom in such movies as “The Social Network” and the upcoming romantic comedy “Friends With Benefits” and the sci-fi thriller “Now”), don't assume he's unplugged his stereo for the duration too.

The former 'N Sync heartthrob and erstwhile Mr. SexyBack stays keenly aware of modern pop, even if he isn't making any. And these days, Timberlake feels particularly moved by the 2010 album “Nothing” from N.E.R.D. — the hip-hop/rock-funk side project of the hit-making duo Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, who produced much of the singer's 2002 album, “Justified.”

Timberlake warmed to the subject when Pop & Hiss asked him what's in heavy rotation on his iPod:
“‘Come Around Sundown' is really good — the latest Kings of Leon,” Timberlake said.

“I really feel inspired by what Pharrell and Chad did with the new N.E.R.D. album,” he continued. “Those producers care a lot about sonics. I hear the Doors and Queen a lot on that album. Pharrell has a way of being cryptic with his lyrics, though, so I'm still trying to decipher what he's talking about.”

-- Chris Lee

Related: 

- Justin Timberlake is focused on film

Photo: Ricardo DeArata / Los Angeles Times

Call it a case of putting the musical cart before the filmic horse.

While the overwhelming majority of movies -- especially big budget Hollywood tent-pole films -- hire soundtrack composers only after all the footage has been shot, “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski approached the French dance music duo Daft Punk about composing the film’s score a full two years before cameras rolled. His thinking was, the group’s mash-up of electro-rave beats and symphonic orchestral compositions would set an emotional tone for the sci-fi thriller’s futuristic scope and sweep.

Band mates Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter experimented with different musical textures, but ultimately decided -- in what initially came as a surprise to both Kosinski and “Tron: Legacy” distributor Disney Studios -- that the kind of big-beat electronica for which they are known was all wrong for the movie. Instead, the group went in a more orchestral direction that almost nothing in its musical oeuvre suggested they could pull off.

“There was this idea to find influences that could be 400 years old -- or 400 years in the future,” Bangalter said. “To properly establish a timeless quality that suggests both the future and the past.”

After a year and eight months of work on the project, Daft Punk and music arranger and orchestrator Joseph Trapanese decamped to London’s AIR Lyndhurst studios to record with an 85-piece orchestra over the course of a rapid-fire session that lasted less than a week.

“It was both exhilarating and very emotional,” recalled Bangalter, a slender, thoughtful guy with a shock of unruly hair who does most of the talking for the group in strongly accented but flawless English. “And at the same time it was completely terrifying. You were working a year and a half on pieces of music that you had five days to record.

This is Part 2 of Chris Lee's story from his rare interview with Daft Punk. Today, we see how the duo worked on the score for "Tron: Legacy" and whether more soundtracks are in the works. (To read Part 1, click here.)

After a year of reflection in which "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski continued to detail his vision for "Tron: Legacy" to them, Daft Punk duo Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter agreed to take the plunge as a means of learning to "widen the palette" of Daft Punk's sound. And in 2008 Disney arranged to have the band mates meet with several of the most successful soundtrack composers working today about potentially collaborating: Hans Zimmer, Harry-Gregson Williams, John Powell and Christophe Beck among them.

Bangalter, 35, said: "They were very generous and very open, sharing a lot of technical advice."

"And warnings," De Homem-Christo, 36, added. "They said, 'You have to make your vision understood. It's not easy. You're serving a movie. You're not just serving the director, you're serving a team of people. It's always about changing and going back.' "

The band ultimately scrapped any collaboration plans. And the task of telling the studio fell to Kosinski, a successful commercial director with no feature film background. "It was considered a huge risk for Disney," Kosinski said. "A director who had never done a feature before and composers who hadn't scored a movie before."

'Electronic sketches'

After the two relocated to Los Angeles, scoring began in earnest in January 2009. Nevermind that "Tron: Legacy" still had no script, only concept drawings to illustrate set pieces and characters. De
Homem-Christo and Bangalter decided that an orchestral score employing subtle electronic cues -- rather than vice versa -- would be most appropriate to "paint that epic quality" the film dictated. So the duo applied the same kind of musical cross-pollination responsible for its gold-certified 1997 debut album "Homework" and commercial breakthrough "Discovery" to recording violin arpeggios, surging horns and roiling timpani.

 
"In dance music, we've always tried to combine existing genres -- heavy metal and disco or funk, something that contrasts associations," Bangalter said. "[For the film], we liked the idea of a dark influence reminiscent of some electronic scores of the '70s. But at the same time, we wanted the scope of classic Hollywood. To mash up those things that usually exist on opposite ends of the spectrum."

The group hooked up with music arranger and orchestrator Joseph Trapanese, whose job was
to translate Bangalter and De Homem-Christo's ideas into symphonic arrangements. They provided him with "extensive electronic sketches" -- synthesizer approximations of orchestral music and iTunes playlists running the gamut of 20th century film composers that were indicative of the "timeless" vibe they wanted.

"They had this very clear and distinct idea of what the orchestra should sound like," Trapanese said. "They gave me an overall tone to work in. Maybe they couldn't physically transcribe what music for, say, a cello. But they know how a cello sounds and how to translate ideas to it."

Tonally, Bangalter explained: "We thought it was very important that the score not sound like real world music. It could not feel 2010 in any aspect."

In July 2010, Trapanese helped actualize Daft's vision for the score over a five-day recording session with an 85-piece orchestra at London's AIR Lyndhurst studios. "My role was as the interface between the robots and the orchestra," he joked.

For his part, Kosinski says he understands why Daft Punk wanted to diverge from the repetitive, sample-and-synthesizer-based template that has served such epochal dance floor anthems as "One More Time." And he feels the new music fuses electronic and orchestral music in ways that serve the scope and sweep of "Tron: Legacy."

"It was always conceived as a blend," Kosinski said. "What evolved over that first year was the ratio. The original thinking was more electronic music with classical orchestral lines in it. As the process evolved, when they got down to writing the final cues, it became much more orchestral than any of us initially anticipated. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out."

Even in the face of acclaim for the group's new musical direction, though, the influential music review website Pitchfork panned the soundtrack, lamenting the "gloom of blown expectations" and basically calling into question whether Daft Punk had sold its soul to Hollywood.

Bangalter and De Homem-Christo said they have no plans to record another soundtrack anytime soon and hinted at the release of new Daft Punk music: "Making music for a movie is very humbling," Bangalter said. "We've been working on some of our music concurrently." (They declined to specify touring or album release plans.)

With typically Gallic shrugs, the band mates also said they have learned to live with being tarred and feathered as "commercial."

"We like the idea of trying to experiment and do different things we haven't done in the past," said Bangalter. "Our idea of selling out is a different one, though. I imagine it would be finding a successful formula and sticking with it and always doing the same thing. That is not what is exciting to us."

-- Chris Lee

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Review: 'Tron: Legacy' glows bright but lacks life

Free 'Tron: Legacy' screening on Dec. 15

'Tron' creator on 'arcane, dark cinema voodoo'

Daft Punk gives 'Tron: Legacy' a pulse and power

Daft Punk rocks the grid with 'Derezzed'

'Tron' designer hoped for 'a new chapter of beauty'

'Tron: Legacy' -- a film of visual marvels

Top photo: Daft Punk on the fringe in 2001. Credit: Seb Janiak. Middle photo: Daft Punk does a cameo in "Tron: Legacy." Credit: Disney. Bottom photo: Daft Punk takes a stroll down the red carpet in Hollywood at the El Capitan for "Tron: Legacy." Credit: Valerie Macon / AFP / Getty Images

Times staff writer Chris Lee, who landed a rare interview with Daft Punk, writes about the French electronic music duo who scored "Tron: Legacy." Today, Pop & Hiss presents Part 1 of Lee's story, which delves into how the duo came to be involved with the project. Part 2 will follow this weekend.

Played in the denouement to a gripping shootout between digital warriors on rocket-propelled hang-gliders, the musical passage "Adagio for Tron" arrives about two-thirds through the $170-million sci-fi thriller "Tron: Legacy" (which hit multiplexes Dec. 17). It's an elegiac movement recorded by a symphony orchestra that features desolate violins swelling around a barely there synthesizer pulse.

Scoring aces such as Hans Zimmer ("The Dark Knight," "Pirates of the Caribbean") and John Williams (the "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" franchises) have become global brands for creating similar emotionally pregnant soundscapes for film -- the kind of music that isn't shy about pushing viewers' buttons or providing an emotional context for what's on-screen.

But while "Adagio for Tron" -- for that matter, most of the tracks on the soundtrack -- shows a mastery of orchestral music and fluency for deploying every symphonic resource from timpani to Wagner tuben, the musicians responsible for the score are better known for a sound that can be characterized as anything but classical.

That would be Daft Punk. In a startling departure from the kind of techno-disco-heavy metal mash-ups and bombastic dance music that propelled them into international superstardom, the Grammy-winning French electronica duo back-burnered what they do best and went on hiatus from a lucrative touring schedule for nearly two years to compose and produce the "Tron: Legacy" soundtrack.

In its first week of release, the CD landed at No. 10 on the national album chart, scanning over 70,000 units according to Nielsen SoundScan; it has sold more than 118,000 units to date. Critically hailed as a game-changer for the group (even while a certain quadrant of the blognoscenti decries its commerciality), the soundtrack is the first film score to chart that high in half a decade and Daft Punk's highest-charting album to date.

But hiring the group to score one of Disney's tent-pole films of 2010 was hardly a no-brainer for studio brass. Moreover, it took the members of Daft Punk, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, over a year to commit to the project after being initially approached by "Tron: Legacy" director Joseph Kosinski. And when the duo finally set to work with an 85-piece orchestra,
they shocked the filmmakers by shelving Daft's signature four-on-the-floor sound in favor of a more classical direction that little in the duo's musical oeuvre suggested they were qualified to produce.

 
"It was not obvious for anyone," Bangalter said during a rare interview with the notoriously press-averse group. He was seated at an outdoor picnic table at the Jim Henson Productions complex in Hollywood, where Daft Punk's production company, Daft Arts, keeps offices. "We knew that dance music was not the appropriate style of music to fit this movie -- in scope and tone on many levels. We were not interested in doing it in terms of what we've done in the past," he said.

Underground act

Bangalter and De Homem-Christo started out in Paris as a punk-leaning indie rock group before trading their guitars for computer sequencers and making a name as an underground rave act. In the early '90s, Daft Punk performed a self-styled synthesis of acid house, funk and big beat electronica at illegal warehouse parties in France that "you had to crawl under barbed wire and run from police" to attend, as Bangalter recalled.

But they shocked rave purists by landing a major-label recording deal with Virgin/EMI in 1996. Since then, with musical output comprising a scant three studio albums, the Grammy-winning live recording "Alive 2007" and a couple of remix CDs, Daft Punk has cemented its reputation as an enigmatic group of almost unerring street cred and uncompromising vision as well as a top touring act that has headlined major music festivals around the world.

Big-budget Hollywood films typically contract a soundtrack composer only when the film is in the can. In contrast to the prevailing method, though, "Tron: Legacy's" Kosinski tried to enlist the group in 2007 long before a script or even so much as a single visual effects test had been created.

Given the musicians' electronic musical métier and the movie's computer-matrix-for-virtual-gladiator-games setting, it seemed like a marriage made in digital heaven. Plus, Bangalter and De Homem-Christo already had some film experience, having co-written and co-directed the arty travelogue "Daft Punk's Electroma." And Bangalter composed a score for controversial French writer-director Gaspar Noé's 2002 drama "Irreversible" (albeit one filled with dread-inducing techno and not anything remotely orchestral).

The original "Tron" left a lasting impression on Bangalter and De Homem-Christo, who saw the movie as children and took to heart its core value: that the interface between humans and technology can be alternately seductive, galvanizing and terrifying. As evidenced by the group's robotic helmets -- without which they have seldom been photographed since 1996 -- the "Tron"-inspired electronic pyramid they use for live shows (beginning with 2006's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival) and the heavily computerized "Robot Rock" that characterizes most of Daft Punk's last studio album, 2005's "Human After All," "Tron" remains a touchstone for the duo that's helped define much of Daft Punk's cultural output.

But even after a meeting during which Kosinski and the musicians discussed their mutual admiration for recording artists such as Vangelis, Philip Glass and "Tron" soundtrack composer Wendy Carlos, De Homem-Christo and Bangalter still had doubts about signing onto the project.

"Obviously, we love 'Tron,' " said De Homem-Christo, the quieter, more intense of the two. "We thought it would be hard for the director or anybody in the new 'Tron' to top not only the music but the visual aspect of the first one, which is still relevant and more avant-garde than most of the stuff out there now. Also, to commit to work with a big studio, maybe the biggest and most iconic? It was a big question."

How did Daft Punk overcome their doubts, what was their work like on the score, and will they be doing another soundtrack soon? Check back this weekend for Part 2.

-- Chris Lee

RECENT AND RELATED

'Tron' glow-in-the-dark posters are retro visions

'Tron: Legacy,' the Hollywood premiere

Review: 'Tron: Legacy' glows brightly but lacks life

Free 'Tron: Legacy' screening on Dec. 15

'Tron' creator on 'arcane, dark cinema voodoo'

Daft Punk gives 'Tron: Legacy' a pulse and power

Daft Punk rocks the grid with 'Derezzed'

'Tron' designer hoped for 'a new chapter of beauty'

'Tron: Legacy' -- a film of visual marvels

Top photo: Musicians Thomas Banglater and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk pose back-to-back. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times. Bottom photo: Daft Punk is pictured with sirens at the premiere for "Tron: Legacy" in Hollywood at the El Capitan Theatre. Credit: John Sciulli / Getty Images.

In a story in this Sunday’s Calendar section, Justin Timberlake comes clean about his decision to go on indefinite hiatus from making music in lieu of a newer –- and in light of the Oscar buzz surrounding his performance in “The Social Network” -- suddenly viable pursuit: movie stardom.

“My first two albums, I woke up and it was undeniable what I had to be doing. I had to be making an album,” Timberlake said. “It’s not undeniable to me now.”

The pop superstar has remained mostly schtum about his choice to forgo recording and performing music for the last few years (apart from the occasional guest verse or late-night performance) and even got a bit testy when buttonholed by Entertainment Weekly on the subject.

But in a wide-ranging interview with Pop & Hiss, it became clear Timberlake is abundantly aware that his career choices don’t sit well with everybody –- even while he refuses to let such outward perceptions sway his creative resolve.

“Sometimes people look at me like I’m ungrateful for my music career because I’m not putting out an album every year,” said Timberlake. “I don’t know what to say to that. There’s nothing I can say that sounds genuine to those people because I’m subject to their projections at me. I try not to be a prisoner of that. If I engage in that, then I’m not an artist.”

Personal Playlist is a new Pop & Hiss series in which personalities in and out of the pop world share their recent music picks.

Zach Galifianakis is no stranger to pop music. He's appeared in videos for the likes of Kanye West and Fiona Apple and was so moved by the Anita Baker song “You Bring Me Joy” that he shot an unauthorized clip for it (which, of course, became a viral sensation). So when Pop & Hiss caught up with Galifianakis — who costars in the road comedy “Due Date,” which hit theaters last week— we had to ask: What's on your iPod these days?

“I'm late to the game, but I think they're the best: MGMT. I might as well be saying Huey Lewis and the News. It doesn't surprise me that people are hating on their second album [‘Congratulations']. Anytime people get famous there's going to be that backlash. That's the indie rock mentality. Whether it's deserved or not, it's like, ‘We liked you, now we don't like you.' That's exactly how it works; trust me, I've been guilty of it.

“Also, I went to an Adele concert a few nights ago. She's an English singer, 22. I took my whole family there, I got 10 people in town [for the premiere of ‘Due Date']. She just has a beautiful voice.” 

— Chris Lee

Related:

- Zach Galifianakis approaches 'Due Date' with clean feet 

- Movie review: 'Due Date'

So maybe "Michael Jackson's This Is It" wasn't quite it.

The Jackson estate and Cirque du Soleil announced plans Wednesday for a Jackson-themed touring production, "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour," that is set to open in Montreal in October. The arena tour, which combines the performer's choreography and music with the Quebecois acrobatic troupe's signature dance and aerial moves, will travel to 27 cities across North America and reach Los Angeles' Staples Center and Anaheim's Honda Center in January 2012.

The production's writer-director, Jamie King, served as Madonna's creative director for the last dozen years, overseeing her 2008 "Sticky & Sweet" world tour. More crucial to his new effort, however, King previously worked with the King of Pop, serving as a backup dancer for Jackson for two years on his 1992-93 "Dangerous" world tour.

According to King, "The Immortal World Tour" combines the kind of pop spectacle Jackson was known for with the esoteric, theatrical qualities associated with Cirque du Soleil productions such as "O," "KÀ" and "Zumanity."

"From the moonwalk to the iconic choreography we've seen in 'Thriller' and 'Beat It' and 'Bad' -- all his mini-movies and music videos -- mix that with the world of Cirque," King said in an interview with The Times. "You shake it and can literally turn it on its head. Imagine taking the moonwalk to new levels, to new heights. Being able to do the moonwalk literally as if you're on the moon, all the way around the arena."

Unlike such Las Vegas-based Cirque du Soleil productions as "Love" (a joint venture between the troupe and the Beatles’ Apple Corps that re-imagines the Fab Four's music within circus-based artistry) and "Viva Elvis" (a Cirque show developed in conjunction with Elvis Presley Enterprises that launched this year), the initial idea with "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour" was to "bring Michael to the fans" and create the feeling of his concerts in an arena setting, said John Branca, co-executor of the Jackson estate.

"Cirque has not done a show with Elvis or the Beatles or any other historic rock 'n' roll icon that has gone into arenas and toured North America or the world, so it was exciting to be able to do something that had not been done before," Branca said. "Ultimately, there will be a separate show residing permanently in Las Vegas. That show is a couple of years off."

-- Chris Lee

Photo: A scene from the film "Michael Jackson's This Is It." Associated Press / AEG / Sony Pictures

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Owing to space constraints in The Times’ print product, not all the weirdness and wonderment of Die Antwoord could fit into an article about the group that appears in Monday’s Calendar section. This online version offers a longer take of that article.

Since February, the question has become so linked with South African “rave-rap” trio Die Antwoord  that you’d be forgiven for thinking the cuss-word-laden query is actually part of the group’s name.

“Die Antwoord? What the … ?!”

The trio’s name translates as “the answer” in Afrikaans. But that emphatic question has been posed all over the “interwebs” (the group’s misnomer for cyberspace) thanks to Die Antwoord’s hauntingly enigmatic homemade videos “Enter the Ninja” and “Zef Side,” which have become viral supernovas this year, racking up a combined 11 million YouTube views. Puzzlement with the group also reverberated through the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April, where the trio confounded and dazzled festival-goers over the course of a riotous 20-minute set.

According to hard-rhyming, helium-voiced frontwoman Yo-Landi Vi$$er, Die Antwoord is growing increasingly comfortable with causing confusion. “It’s alien, all right?” she said. “It’s not really our problem. And not everyone’s confused.”

Chalk up the head-scratching to the Cape Town trio’s singular synthesis of throw-away cultural effluvia: its bawdy sex rhymes, naked celebration of a uniquely South African white trashiness called “Zef,” its employ of imagery equally inspired by children and the criminally insane as well as the sense of cultivated mystery that has shrouded Die Antwoord for the last nine months.

On Monday, at a Hollywood screening of his short film “Runaway,” Kanye West mused in characteristically magniloquent terms about his creative output. He and pop diva Rihanna are “blue bloods,” West said from the stage, explaining that their “ideas turn red when they hit the air.”

But less than 24 hours later, the firebrand rapper-producer was apparently seeing red after reading an appraisal of “Runaway” written by your humble correspondent.

West took to his well-trafficked Twitter account to vent about a Times reporter’s blog post error concerning his new album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.”  Specifically, it was my omission, since corrected, of the word “Beautiful” from that title in two out of three citations on the post that seemed to yank his chain.

Judging from West’s tweet output, though, he took the omission as a deliberate and personal attack.

The performer’s Twitter postings -– with their seemingly deliberate misspelling of this author’s name -- follow in their entirety after the jump: