With a level of hype worthy of the second coming, Daft Punk finally beamed in to deliver to their wildly salivating music fans of Australia their ultimate early Christmas present. Since their triumphant return to live stages at last year’s Coachella music festival, Daft Punk have been the name, the act, the spectacle that every right-minded human on the planet has been fawning over. Rising like some kind of robotic phoenix from their indifferently received third album Human After All, Daft Punk have conquered all with their live show. This year they’ve also made a film, been sampled by Kanye West and every second new band claims them as an influence – they even have a tribute band Faux Punk.

And now they’re here.

So could they possibly live up to the hype? Or would it all just be smoke, mirrors and a light show that could cause the Kyoto protocol to spontaneously combust? No one here tonight can have possibly avoided the stories and the images; everyone seems to have at least one mate who’s seen them overseas and returned like they’ve visited some kind of promised land wearing their Daft t-shirts like talismans of the prophesy. But for most of the assembled thousands on the mount this is the chance to at last witness the whole spectacular in the (metallic) flesh.

Everyone’s already seen the lightshow on one of the millions of YouTube clips and probably heard the full mix courtesy of the CD release of Alive 07. But that’s like watching the latest blockbuster film on a bootleg DVD featuring the sound of people coughing, in comparison to making the effort to see the show in its full cinematic glory. Only the most jaded of punters could possibly fail to be dazzled by the theatrics of the Daft show.

Opening a little later than advertised, though still oddly early, Muscles played his set to a small and young crowd of Melbourne’s music community. You could have covered all the front section kiddies with a poser’s keffiyeh, but the pockets of curious early arrivals on the hill ate up every note of the electro-flavoured set and its sarcastic aftertaste. While there was plenty of waving to scatter the flies, Ice Cream finally had arms moving in worship to every ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’. By time he finished his set with the album closer Hey Muscles I Love You, most of the crowd could heartily agree with the title.

After working hours wound up, the venue started to fill and Cut Copy managed to prove just how bad the sound at the music bowl can be up on the grassy knoll. Down front under the cover of the roof the sound clears up, though the vocals are as offhand and casual as usual. When the band spark up, as they do on Saturdays, the crowd eagerly joins in the excitement. They’ll be even more excited when the long awaited follow-up to Bright Like Neon Love drops in the not too distant future.

Between bands the crowd keeps amused with the traditional overpriced drinks, and passes judgement on the antics and costumes of their fellow punters. There are the gaggles of identically dressed gals who have put in so much effort to glam up that their best friends have to act as mirrors and remind each other what they all look like. Home made Daft t-shirts almost manage to outnumber the ones freshly purchased from the merch tent. The amount of fleuoro suggests we could be at a Christmas party for traffic cops and the ultimate in bad music festival fashion, the all in one keffiyeh/Australian flag, made an appearance. The paper masks handed out at the gate turn the backs of heads into robot faces or hang from belts like futuristic sporran. Points for sheer commitment to the bloke who silvered up as a robot, but you’d have to have a few loose wires in your circuits loose to look deliberately that stupid. And it’s warmish but that’s still no excuse for the blokes who want to show off how evenly they can apply their fake tan.

Turning attention again to the stage, The Presets have taken their positions, but caught in the wind and dust the sound was muddy and only the occasional beat hit as hard as it should. They’re still peddling roughly the same set that they were offering years back, but this wasn’t really the time to be road-testing new material. The follow up to Beams is due in March, so we were treated to a brief two track glimpse of what they’ve have been fine tuning. The first, as yet untitled, thumps like a Klaxons collaboration with the Chemical Brothers even though they’ve been beaten to the punch by the real thing. Then the current single My People gets an airing, with its booming drum and chant along chorus – clearly a major departure for the boys. They close out with the traditional encore I Go Hard, I Go Home the vocals battling with the distortion on the hill to produce sheer gibberish.

SebastiAn & Kavinsky’s set had them buried between the seated section and general admission on the hill, with the crowd up front given nothing to look at except a black curtain. Perhaps it was a deliberate ploy to have nothing to see before the visual overdose of the Daft light show. Nonetheless the anticipation of the main event had the crowd in raptures. Every ripple of the curtain (is it opening!?) was met with the same squeals of excitement as the peaks of the crowd pleasing DJ set list – M.I.A, Prodigy, Pharoahe Monch’s Simon Says and Mr Oizo’s insane mix of Killing in the Name.

Considering the general post gig feeling of ‘I can now die happy, my life is complete’, maybe the seated section should have been oversold a little to fill it up more. Obviously no one is going to sit – so just ignore the seating, concede and charge a few bucks extra for the closer position. Not to suggest it should be a total free for all – the Herald Sun might quote this after all – but the gap created by the small crowd up front always seems to sap some of the energy of a Music Bowl show for the punter on the hill. Plus the eleven o’clock curfew seems ridiculous for a venue surrounded by parkland. The sound’s muddy enough over the hill – it couldn’t possibly reach any of those precious citizens in their city apartments. Enough complaints… the smoke is rising… something’s happening…

At long last the moment arrives. The chime announces the beginning of our close encounter and the curtains open.

It begins.

The opening chants of Robot Rock give way to Technologic and the screen comes to life. Lights haven’t been this hypnotically inspiring since man discovered fire. Every time it seems like they’ve done everything they can something else lights up. There’s always something a little more impressive up their sleeves, right until they leave the stage after their hour and a half set. There’s a rabbit in the huge multicoloured headlights effect as people seem stunned, unable to dance as they raise cameras and phones into the air to prove to themselves that it’s actually happening. Daft really are here; and they sound great and look even better. There’s not a lot of room for improvisation with such a tightly managed setup. With another act it may be more of an issue, but Daft avoid it with their elusive and ambiguous robot personalities. Besides, no matter how good the sound on your home stereo is you don’t have several tonnes of lighting equipment, let alone a pyramid to recreate the show.

Everything you’ve heard about this show is true and everything you hear is amazing. Snippets of their classics appear and fade away like an overlapping greatest hits mix. Da Funk, Aerodynamic, One More Time, Around the World – in all their glory and louder and more colourful than ever before. The full setlist is available on the back cover of your copy of Alive 07 – right down to the encore including Stardusts’ Music Sounds Better. During the closing moments the crowd hold their hands aloft to form triangles and scream almost as loud as the music has been for the past hour and a half. The robots stand and acknowledge the applause, the love, from the crowd. Then turn their backs, to reveal the Daft logo emblazoned on their jackets and descend into the pyramid.

It’s over. And time to gather together the tiny pieces of our splintered minds.

But for the throngs of fans this will never be forgotten – after all a fair portion of them have it on their cameras and phones. Friends and strangers gush and when Elvis plays over the PA and everyone sings along because they Can’t Help Falling in Love. If the King suddenly appeared no one would have noticed or been shocked. That’s just the way it is. We may travel to Memphis to visit Graceland now, but one day in the future people will pilgrimage to a pyramid somewhere to pay homage and respect to Daft Punk.

This summer some of the biggest names in music will grace our stages, but few, if any, will come close to topping this show. According to their manager and Ed Banger head honcho Busy P, the pyramid is retiring after this tour. It’s taken a long time, too long, for the tour to make its way here, but it has and we’ll be eternally thankful. We have seen it, we’ve heard it and we will never stop talking about it.