Daft Punk is playing ...

And they were excellent. It's interesting, usually when I go to concerts, one of my favorite things to do is watch the artists/performers playing the particular instruments. Usually I watch the drummer and sometimes the bassist or others. For Daft Punk, that does not really work. There's not much visually going on with the artists, and the instrument they play is not visible. This is made up for by the overwhelmingly elaborate visual displays. I don't have good words to describe them as a whole, so let me just give a short glimpse:

The stage opened with a gigantic pyramid in the center (or maybe it'd be better to call it a triangle, or a pyramid cut in half down the diagonal), with Daft Punk inside the pyramid about two thirds of the way up (that section was cut out of the pyramid, but there was still the cap above). They were dressed in what looked like shiny vinyl or leather suits, with reflective robot-style helmets. The visual display started simply, with lights outlining the pyramid in the shape of a triangle, and two large screens to the far sides of the stage showing close ups of the performers and other parts of the stage. Then the large LED display behind the whole stage was added in, previously unnoticed behind them. At some point around here, a secondary display in front of the LED display (and to the sides of the pyramid), which was essentially a triangle honeycomb with lighting along the edges, lit up and was added in to the different visuals. Not content with this, huge lighting strips actually on the pyramid edges were used, and then (for "Around the World") it turned out that the entire arena had similar lighting strips around the edge, which illuminated the whole floor! Next up, it turned out that the surface of the pyramid, not just the edges, were video screens, and they got added into the display! Many variations ensued, such that when they finished the set and the crowd was shouting for an encore, we exchanged remarks as to how they'd be able to top themselves for an encore.

Glowing Costumes. The same ones they were originally wearing were lit up, with light displays along the major lines of the helmets and jackets. Totally awesome and unexpected.

Anyways, it was an excellent show and I even moved around a little somewhat synchronized with the music, which is fairly unusual for me (I'm not sure why, it probably deserves a different blog post about it. I just tend to be a receptive person when listening to music, rather than active or interactive.). Of note were one of the openers for them: Ratatat, which we previously heard on the Gazebo's CD _Some Disassembly Required_. I don't think they played the song which AG put on the mix CD, but they were very good and I'm going to have to hunt down an album soon.