Cole Cuchna

Because when Robot Rock finally hits after that incredible slow building introduction, most artists would use that cathartic musical moment to unleash the full power of the pyramid's LED system.

And no doubt that would have created a hell of a moment.

However, the downside to that approach is that dynamically, your show has nowhere to go.

You reveal your entire hand from the jump.

And for most acts, that's totally fine.

But this is Daft Punk and Daft Punk are storytellers.

Daft Punk understands the power of restraint and the importance of pacing and crafting a dynamic experience that unfolds over time.

And so the lights that accompany the dramatic drop of robot rock are incredibly scaled back.

In fact, they don't trigger a single one of their thousands of LED lights.

Instead, it's just standard can lights, and they're not even colored, just plain white, giving the audience just brief flashes of the full stage structure, preserving the mystery and deepening the sense that something bigger is still to come.

The next song, Technologic, reveals a little bit more.

Here, Daft Punk unveil the massive LED curtain spanning the entire back of the stage, with the song's lyrics appearing in huge black text against a stark red background.

This slow trickle approach to the show's visual elements sustain the entire performance, where each song seems to reveal and utilize a different feature of the structure, creating moment after moment after moment.

It's as if the Alive 2007 stage is alive, slowly evolving from total darkness into a fully illuminated, all-encompassing light show by the concert's end.

It actually mirrors the evolution we traced in Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, where the robotic voice begins stiff and primitive only to slowly transform into something superhuman, capable of things no human could achieve alone.

Daft Punk applied this same symbolic logic to the stage itself, starting with minimal, almost primitive lighting and gradually building toward a futuristic spectacle unlike anything audiences had seen before.

Now, we'll continue to track some of these visual moments as we get deeper into the set list, but we have to briefly back up to the opening track, Robot Rock, to discuss Daft Punk's approach to the music of the show.

Because about five minutes into the song, something dramatic happens.

After a long, dramatic build, Daft Punk launch into a piece of music that had never been heard before.

It loops a guitar chord from Robot Rock and combines it with a drum beat that is not in the original song.