If there is one sound that has come to represent something about quality in today’s dance music industry, it is the French sound. You can’t go to a club today without hearing those distinctive filters, that unmistakable disco vibe, and the crisp, sharp beats. French electronic music has established itself as more than a fad; it’s about quality through experimentation, and it’s showing no signs of going away.

As with all house music, it began with disco. By the late 1970s, disco music had developed into a definable genre, and the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever shot disco into the public spotlight. The fundamentals of house music today can be traced back to legendary nightclubs such as The Paradise Garage and Studio 54, where disco’s short lived notoriety really took off. As disco eventually found itself demoted to smaller venues, the likes of Frankie Knuckles were developing something new. Although Frankie stayed close to disco’s roots, other DJs were pushing a sound influenced by alternative genres: reggae, euro pop, hip hop, new wave, etc.

House music became an underground revolution, and as it began to move away from focusing on songs for radio play, the tracks got longer, the basslines more inventive, and the parties more vibrant. With the advent of drum machines in the 1980s, house music began to take form.

Over in France, during the 1970s there was what is commonly referred to as Euro disco, which was essentially any disco music that didn’t come from the UK or the US. Acts such as Abba were at the forefront of this genre. After a short stint as space disco and the disco backlash in 1979, the term "Euro disco" disappeared altogether and was replaced by just "disco". Throughout the 1980s, disco was a major musical force in France, dominating the radio waves and the clubs. This, along with the influence of P-funk, paved the way for French house music, but it wasn’t until Thomas Bangalter came along that things really began to move.

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo met in 1987, and after a brief fling with indie rock, they started to study the graces of drum machines and formed Daft Punk. 1995’s ‘Da Funk’ (a classic, still played to this day) led to an album deal with Virgin and the release of Homework in 1997. The album is widely regarded as one of the most influential works of electronic music to come out of the 1990s. Daft Punk proved to French people (and the French music industry and media) that dance music was there to stay, and it could be successful. The album’s success was a huge surprise and demonstrative of the fact that electronic music had a broad fan base, transcending boundaries.

To see who influenced Daft Punk’s music, all you have to do is listen to the track ‘Teachers’ from Homework. It lists artists and DJs who Daft Punk learnt something from, taking their sounds and making them into something new: DJ Sneak, DJ Rush, Waxmaster, Hyperactive, Jammin Gerald, Brian Wilson, and the list goes on.

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