Daft Punk Delivers a Beat in Its Purest Form

It’s necessary periodically for someone to strip pop music down to its basic elements: the Velvet Underground leaving only dark shadows, Jonathan Richman the naivete, Johnny Rotten a sneer and a marketing scheme. French duo Daft Punk has taken that role with electronic dance music. On the duo’s debut album, “Homework,” there are no diva vocals, no trippy patina, no kitschy pop conventions accumulated over the music’s evolution from early-’80s house--just the essential beat.

There is also no emotion and little color, often seeming more like a clinical experiment than actual music. And yet Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo have been embraced by fans of the form, as seen in the fervent reception given at the packed El Rey Theatre on Wednesday.

To its credit, the young Parisian pair played the crowd’s energy masterfully. Standing in darkness at its console of sequencers and mixers, the duo ran its four-square thump, bringing it to a series of crowd-rousing crests through an array of sonic effects and a spot-the-sample assortment of digitalized riffs.

And there’s no denying the primal attraction of the beat, especially in the repetitive hooks of the hits “Da Funk” and “Around the World.” Intentionally or otherwise, it harks back to Kraftwerk’s ‘70s computer music (arguably the prime mover of electronic dance), though lacking the German outfit’s arch social commentary. Now, though, the challenge is to build something new on the bared foundation.