Cole Cuchna

Instead, they performed in the Sahara tent, which held around 10,000 people.

But as Daft Punk's set began, word spread quickly around the festival crowd, and an estimated 40,000 people ultimately witnessed the spectacle, many forced to watch on screens outside of the tent.

Here's music journalist Michelangelo Matos describing the scene in the Daft Punk documentary Unchained.

In 2006, we were still a year away from smartphones, but thousands of fans in attendance recorded grainy footage of the show on their flip phones and digital cameras, many uploading their clips to a new video sharing site called YouTube, which had launched just a year prior.

The result was the first viral moment in live music, a fragmented, fan-shot documentation that sustained and expanded the legend of the performance far beyond the festival itself.

As a result of the hype, Daft Punk expanded what was initially planned as a one-off show into a full-scale tour and live album.

Now the impact of the Coachella premiere and subsequent tour has been widely documented.

It set a new blueprint for live electronic performance, merging music, visuals, and stage design into a single, unified experience that would influence a generation of future artists.

However, what remains severely underappreciated about Daft Punk's pyramid-centered live show is how they intentionally use this stage as a vehicle for dramatic storytelling.

Both in its music and visual spectacle, Alive 2007 is the moment where everything Daft Punk had been building toward as musically-centered artistic storytellers finally coalesced into a singular expression.

And it's this aspect of the show I'd like to highlight as we start to dissect its setlist and visuals.

The show begins with a totally dark stage, where a vocoder voice repeats the words human and robot over and over.

Aligned with the themes of Human After All and Electroma, this introduction establishes the theme of the show, humans versus robots, man versus machine.

As we just heard, the space between the words human and robot gets shorter and shorter until eventually they are heard simultaneously.

The symbolism here is clear.

The entire introduction reflects the convergence of humanity and technology over time, giving birth to the half-human, half-robot creatures we now see inside the mysterious, futuristic pyramid structure.

Then as the first song kicks in, it becomes clear that in this battle of man versus machine, it's the machines that have gained the upper hand as the duo launch into their first full track, Robot Rock.

Now we've talked a lot this season about Daft Punk's sense of timing.

Their ability to hold back great ideas until the exact right moment, rather than diluting them through overuse and repetition.

This same moment-making instinct is applied to the visual cues of their light show.