Ex-Kraftwerk Wolfgang Flür was catfished into collaborating with a fake member of Daft Punk
Last week, the ex-Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür released a solo album called Time, which features collaborations from German techno duo U96, Boris Blank (Yello), Juan Atkins, Antony Rother, Emil Schult (ex-Kraftwerk collaborator), Peter Hook (ex-New Order) and Thomas Vangarde, who was listed as a nom de plume of Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk.
Bangalter’s father’s name is Daniel Vangarde, who was an influential musician in France in the ’70s and ’80s, who had a hand in a number of disco hits like The Gibson Brothers’ ‘Cuba’, and he also was involved in Yamasuki Singers’ Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki, a brilliant pseudo~Japanese pop 1971 album featuring kids choirs and instructional dances on a fat beat psych-rock bubblegum opera dance album that is among my treasured vinyl records. I digress.
Of course, Thomas Bangalter was until recently one half of a duo who traded on iconic robotic helmet mystery allowing them to control their image. Which means the duo could be rife for potential creative catchfishing. Which is what has happened.
It has emerged that the Thomas Vangarde in question, who collaborated on the Wolfgang Flür album on two songs, is actually an imposter who has masqueraded as the Daft Punk member and ended up creatively involved and provided production on the album.
This is not something that happened overnight. In fact, Flür and his producer / composer collaborator Peter Duggal have repeatedly mentioned their potential collaboration with Bangalter in interviews for a couple of years but no one from the Daft Punk camp did anything about it.
In February 2023, Flür said he got a Facebook message from Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, which lead to the hoax collaboration.
He sent me a message on the social media. He had just heard the Magazine 1 album and he was furious about it,” Flür explains. “He said, ‘It’s so wonderful. Can I have a signed album? I collect albums but it must be signed personally from you. We love you guys. Without Kraftwerk we would not find our own robot style, being on stage with the helmets, you know. And I love you Wolfgang. And please, can you send me [an album]?’”
After the signed record had arrived chez Bangalter, Flür suggested a collab. “I asked him, ‘Could I invite you to be on a track because I’m just working on the theme, on space, I’m a space fan.’ And he said, ‘Oh I’m also a space fan. I already have an idea, Wolfgang. Maybe you can use it? Give me two days, I must find it. I must not play something new. I think it is exactly what you can maybe use.’
“So he sent me something and it was not really fitting in the musical key. But we changed the key and we corrected it a little bit, with the tempo. But we could very, very much use it in the middle part, together with the bass line of Peter Hook. And it fitted very well.
You can read the full story from The Daft Punk Historian.
The songs are still listed on streaming as featuring Thomas Vangarde, both also featuring Peter Hook.
