Ahhh, 2016 – another year, another Daft Punk rumor; yet, for once, the rumors of touring, studio work and new projects might have some sound footing.  Coming hot of the release of The Weekend’s new track ‘Star Boy’, it’s very evident that the French duo has been back in the studio and laying down a little something something.  Regardless of your personal raves and / or rants about the quality of the track, it begs the question: how long have they really been in the studio?? And now, there’s the website; if you’re a tried and true DP fanatic, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

But first, a little history.  Deep in Birmingham’s  Que Club, back in 1997, Daft Punk recorded the audio for their Alive 1997 – later released in 2001.  Then, a decade later in 2007 – Daft Punk released a long anticipated follow-up album, aptly titled Alive 2007 (surprise). Both of these albums were accompanied by tours. With 2017, and their twenty year alive-aversary just a few short months away – could they be teasing a third live album, and mayyyybe even a tour?? A techno kitten can dream, can’t she? So when I saw the website for Alive2017.com – I might have freaked out, just a bit.

The website itself is a bit bland at first glance; however there is a little, itty bitty number sequence hiding right behind the I.  Plus if I’ve learned anything about the way the world works: you should never judge a book by its cover, but you can definitely judge a website by its code. So,  I dipped in – below, I break it down.

The first set of numbers looks like code, and the last four lines really look like location coordinates (I might watch a lot of CSI…).With a little plugging and chugging of each line of data, and slight manipulation like inserting a . between numerical segments, the first line 48 51 24 2 21 03 becomes 48°51’24.0″N 2°21’03.0″E, which is the longitude and latitude of Paris – France’s château de Techno. Plugging in the rest, you get:

48 51 24 2 21 03: Paris
34 03 118 15: Los Angeles
51 30 26 N 0 7 39: London
40 7128 74 0059: New York
35 6895 139 6917: Tokyo
23 5505 46 6333: Sao Paulo
39 0200 1 4821: Ibiza
33 7206 116 2156: Indio

That last location might be the most important: ARE THE COACHELLA RUMORS FINALLY GOING TO BE TRUE?!

Then, we get to the end of the code – the first thing I noticed was the ‘Wake Date 2016-10-27’; put a reminder, make a note, draw with permanent pen or get a damn tattoo – this date is important.

Last, but not least – ‘Shep Logged Out’: Shep was a character in the esteemed anime movie Interstellar 5555.  And, as if we needed another nod, deep in the source index there’s an interval of 5555.  Is it fate?  Is it phony?  Either way, I’m going to put on Homework back to back with Discovery and pray to the music gods that I’m not just addicted to Mr. Robot and this is all real.