Phoenix' Daft Punk connection through Darlin'

Prior to the release of their first album Phoenix was a Parisien garage band composed of vocalist Thomas Mars (and Sophia Coppola's baby papa), bassist Deck d'Arcy and guitarist Chris Mazzalai.   Mazzalai's older brother Laurent Brancowitz joined the band in 1995 after the demise of a short-lived band (inspired at least by the Beach Boys tune) Darlin'.  Brancowitz' bandmates in Darlin' were Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (now known as Daft Punk).

A couple of Darlin' tracks (the eponymous Darlin' and Cindy So Loud) can be found on the Darlin' myspace. As Phoenix the group went on to release a 500 copy single on their own label Ghettoblaster, they were then signed to Paris-based Source records becoming familiar with labelmates Air for whom they acted as backing band on several UK TV appearances.  They were also the backing band for a remix of Air's Kelly Watch The Stars single.  Shortly after this in 2000 Phoenix released their first album United (2000).

Alphabetical (2004) got some minor play and a special commission from Parisien male fashion laureate Hedi Slimane (to do a special mix of Victim Of The Crime) for that year's Dior Homme collection).  The live album taken from the Alphabetical tour's 150 dates was released as Live! Thirty Days Ago (some 30 days after then end of the tour).

It is their last two albums - It's Never Been Like That (2006) and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009) - that have of course drawn the group more fully into the zeitgeist of their age.  By this point drummer Thomas Hedlund was an integral part of the band's sound along with keyboardists Robin Coudert and Jonathan Chavez.

Precocious fans of the group may want to search out obscurities from their early career such as an instrumental single Heatwave that was released on a compilation Source Rocks (also covered by DB Boulevard in 2002 with a vocal under the title Point of View).  Likewise Party Time (released on United ) and a another 7" single called City Lights are highly prized by completists.   Both are very hard to find, the latter City Lights appears on a very rare Air compilation Deck Safari - bearing little similarity to current Phoenix.

But arguably the most obscure Phoenix to at least get your hands on at least a hard copy of is the aforementioned Darlin' tracks (either from the Darlin' EP or the incredibly difficult to obtain Shimmies In Super 8 compilation on Duophone.

Shimmies was released as two 7 inches in April 1993 with tracks by Huggy Bear, Darlin', Colm and Stereolab- the first record was white vinyl the second was green vinyl.   Only 800 copies were run (of which 400 had stickers) all copies were numbered.