So Much Love to Give — Together

“So Much Love to Give” is about as simple as a record gets: one vocal phrase, one groove, repeated for more than ten minutes. Thomas Bangalter and DJ Falcon released it as Together in December 2002, and the project later left a trace in Daft Punk’s own music.

Two names from the Roulé circle

DJ Falcon, born Stéphane Quême in Paris, worked in A&R at Virgin before releasing his first EP, Hello My Name Is DJ Falcon, on Roulé in 1999. Roulé was the label of Thomas Bangalter, half of Daft Punk and also one third of Stardust, whose “Music Sounds Better With You” came out on Roulé first. Falcon is a cousin of Alan Braxe, the producer behind “Intro” with Fred Falke.

Bangalter and Falcon played together as DJs and released records as Together: first “Together” in 2000, then “So Much Love to Give” in 2002. Before that, in 1999, Falcon had remixed Cassius’ “La Mouche”.

One loop, ten minutes

The track is built on a sample of “Love’s Such a Wonderful Thing” by The Real Thing. The 12-inch has one track, 10:43 long. Critics heard the repetition as the point: Pitchfork wrote that it “bulldozes the path from repetition to delirium”, and Vice’s Ryan Bassil described the sample as “a never-changing, constant, euphoric nebula”.

Release and charts

Roulé released it in December 2002. It reached No. 71 on the UK singles chart, No. 72 on the Scottish sales chart and No. 3 on the UK dance chart, a strong result for a ten-minute loop with no radio edit. With no edit for radio, its audience was DJs.

Freeloaders, “Contact” and after

In 2005 the British duo Freeloaders turned the same idea into a radio single, credited “featuring the Real Thing”, on All Around the World. Written by Chris and Eddie Amoo and produced by Dale Longworth and Kevin O’Toole, it reached No. 9 in the UK, No. 6 in Scotland, No. 21 on the Dutch Top 40 and No. 1 on the Irish dance chart. Where the Together original lasts almost eleven minutes, the Freeloaders radio edit runs 3:06.

The Together sets left another trace. “Contact”, from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (2013), features DJ Falcon and is based on a sample he and Bangalter had used in their Together DJ sets. Falcon later formed Braxe + Falcon with his cousin, and in 2022 the pair launched Smugglers Way, an imprint of Domino, releasing “Step by Step” featuring Panda Bear the same year.