Albums : Daft Punk : Random Access Memories
Albums : Daft Punk : Random Access Memories
Listen TO Daft Punk : Random Access Memories
Shortly before sunset on Monday night dozens of guests made their way up to the top of the Shard for the UK launch of Daft Punk's latest album, Random Access Memories.
Guests in the landmark skyscraper at London Bridge were heard to remark that it felt like a throwback to a more affluent era, when record labels could regularly afford such flamboyant gestures.
Everything about Daft Punk's fourth album stands out from the rest of the modern industry like the Shard does from the London skyline: bold, divisive, unfeasibly big and impossible to ignore.
Daft Punk's feverishly debated promotional campaign would be spectacular coming from an established superstar. It is the more remarkable for being conceived by two shy Frenchmen who have not been photographed without their robot helmets since the 90s and who made their previous three albums (Homework, Discovery and Human After All) at their homes on modest budgets. Only David Bowie's comeback has generated equivalent excitement this year. It is typical of the attention to detail and insistence on creative independence that has defined Daft Punk's career since their first single 20 years ago.
"The only secret to being in control is to have it in the start," Thomas Bangalter, one half of the Daft Punk band, tells the Observer Magazine this Sunday. "Retaining control is still hard but obtaining control is virtually impossible."
Daft Punk have said that Random Access Memories is an attempt to revive the "magic" of the event albums that soundtracked their childhoods. Professing themselves bored with electronic music, they worked with crack session musicians and some musical heroes in various studios and cities.
The promotional campaign is similarly interested in looking back in order to go forward. A teaser video released on Monday – showing a robot lovingly dropping the needle onto a vinyl copy of the album – sums up the duo's retro-futurist aesthetic.
Daft Punk's sense of heritage explains their alliance with Columbia Records, which celebrates its 125th birthday this year. They approached Columbia last summer – having already financed the recording of the album themselves – with detailed promotional plans, including vast billboards on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
"We wanted it to be a campaign of weight, like when record companies had the confidence that they had a big, big, record," Columbia Records' chief executive, Rob Stringer, recently told Billboard magazine.
Secrecy was enforced by withholding key information and making everyone who came into contact with the record sign strict non-disclosure agreements.
A fascination with enduring American cultural institutions led the duo to break the news of the album with an advertisement on Saturday Night Live, on 2 March, featuring a 15-second loop of the single Get Lucky. Eager fans quickly posted their own extended versions on YouTube.
"The internet allows for a very interactive and playful connection with the audience," said Bangalter. "It's almost like a striptease where you see something gradually instead of uncovering it as a whole."
There has been little traditional promotion by the pair themselves, who dislike interviews and have decided not to tour. They outsourced much of the press publicity to guest performers such as Pharrell Williams and the loquacious Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers.
Each key musician on the record filmed an interview for the Collaborators series on the band's website, shot using 16mm film stock by the veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman.
On 14 April, a clip from the video for Get Lucky was debuted at the Coachella festival in California, inspiring more buzz in 90 seconds than most of the bands on the bill.
Get Lucky, an unusually straightforward disco anthem, had the hardest job of all: setting up the album with a bona fide hit single.
So far it has topped the UK charts for three weeks and broken Spotify's record for the most streams in a single day, attracting the kind of new listener who does not get excited about Saturday Night Live commercials.
The only apparent deviation from Daft Punk's plan was the worldwide streaming of the album on Monday, which replaced an eccentric scheme to debut it at the Wee Waa annual show in New South Wales, Australia, on Friday.
It is uncertain what lessons the industry will draw from the success of Random Access Memories, because no other band has Daft Punk's influence (on other performers such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Kanye West) and mystique.
The pair's last album, in 2005 and entitled Human After All, flopped; their 2007 art movie Electroma was little seen, and their score for the 2010 sci-fi film Tron: Legacy, had mixed reviews.
Only their groundbreaking 2006-7 tour, a pivotal influence on America's subsequent electronic dance music boom, was an unmitigated triumph.
Yet here they are in 2013, looking very much like one of the biggest bands in the world. Perhaps the only lesson is that it is, after all, possible to make a huge impact by being bold and doing things differently.
Critics of the industry dismiss hype as a kind of brainwashing imposed from above, but hype only works if the excitement is widely and genuinely shared.
Guests at the Shard party wondered whether Daft Punk themselves were there – anonymous without their helmets.
They were not, but then they did not need to be. In an era obsessed with celebrity, these two canny Frenchmen have somehow managed to create an unprecedented sense of occasion while staying in the shadows.
Random Access Memories Review
Random Access Memories has been echoing in the metallic domes of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for half a decade. The sheer number of collaborations on RAM, including noted movie composers Paul Williams and Giorgio Moroder, finds Daft Punk building upon their new-flesh narrative, adding to their storied, cinematic mythos of the diminishing boundary between computers and people. What sort of film is this? Bangalter has shared that the group is “[D]rawing a parallel between the brain and the hard drive – the random way that memories are stored.” This tale of robots yearning to live like men is a motif soldered throughout the group’s multimedia career. But with Random Access Memories, the robots have found their souls. All it took was razing the digital foundations that brought the group to fame in the first place.
Within seconds, the record stands out as a more homogenized and sleek listening experience than its predecessor, 2005′s scattershot Human After All. Yet it’s also marked by a playful whimsy that falls short of measuring up to the variety that pulsed through 2001′s Discovery, or the groundbreaking dance exploration found within their fabled 1997 debut, Homework. Instead, Daft Punk cuts ties with itself on RAM by exploring the past through some of the best and boldest collaborative efforts in recent memory.
It’s a rolodex of celebrated artists, both contemporary and preceding, who have inspired Bangalter and Homem-Christo to make music that revisits ’70s discotheques and ’80s funkadelic boat parties. Opener “Give Life Back to Music” features a grinning Nile Rogers and Paul Jackson Jr. throwing down a jazzy fusion of guitar licks over an upbeat, funky processional that could serve as an album summary or even a warning: “Abandon hope of an EDM record all ye who enter here.”
“Giorgio by Moroder” is framed around iconic Italian producer, songwriter, and composer Giorgio Moroder, who shares an autobiographical monologue that starts in the ’60s and works its way to today. Granted, it’s an honorable soliloquy from a Dance Music Hall of Fame inductee, but the spartanism of a spoken word segment – especially one that sounds like Werner Herzog waxing poetic over the Drive soundtrack — three tracks deep into the album is a roadblock and diminished return upon subsequent replays that could be better positioned at the very start or end of the record. It doesn’t help that it’s followed by the album’s weakest moment: the bloated dirge of a piano ballad, “Within”.
It’s not until Julian Casablancas’ inclusion on “Instant Crush” that the album centers back on course. The Strokes frontman previously demonstrated an interest in dance music with his 2009 solo effort, Phrazes for the Young, and judging from this track, one can only hope he lingers around the genre. Casablancas fires off in rapid succession “Now I thought about what I want to say / But I never really know where to go / So I chained myself to a friend / Cause I don’t know what else to do.” The most fascinating thing about the track is how it stands apart from the more traditional vocoding techniques of today. Here, Casablancas manages to come across as an artificial lifeform grasping toward human sentiments, rather than the other way around. It’s a confirmation of his own talents, as well as Daft Punk’s disciplined production and attention to detail.
“Doin’ It Right” is another dreamy partnership that plants Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear, in the driver’s seat. While most of RAM is an amalgamation of collaborative styles, like two white-hot stars sharing energy across each other’s distinct orbits, the gravity of Lennox’s hymnal, Brian Wilson-inspired croon hijacks the song and makes “Doin’ It Right” feel more like a Lennox solo output. It’s intriguing to see the French duo relinquish so much control in the interest of venturing even further out past the buoys of a comfort zone. The fact that Animal Collective and Daft Punk would one day cross paths is also a remarkable curiosity for anyone who paid attention during the early days of MP3 swaps and file-sharing.
But the standout collaborator on Random Access Memories is, without a doubt, N.E.R.D. frontman and Neptunes producer Pharrell Williams, whose coltish funkiness and frisky hooks rain gold upon album highlights “Lose Yourself to Dance” and “Get Lucky”. The former is a siren song that beckons bemused listeners off the streets and into New York’s long disposed Club 54. Once inside, “Get Lucky” captivates with its sophisticated instrumentation and Williams’ bad boy confessions: “She’s up all night ‘til the sun/I’m up all night to get some/She’s up all night for good fun/I’m up all night to get lucky.” A radio edit of “Get Lucky” has been spinning for weeks and will continue on rotation as it’s already one of this year’s strongest singles and an early contender for this summer’s anthem.
Random Access Memories proves that Daft Punk remain masters of their domain, who defend their array of superlatives because of, rather than in spite of, unconventional sound choices. The strings, the drum kits, and yes, even the clarinets, were not expected from the electronic duo, but somehow it all works. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey taught that man became who he is by mastering his tools, not by being a slave to them. Perhaps too, robots can only pretend to be human for so long before parting from their synthetic origins and embracing the tangible.
Contact Daft Punk
Website | Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | YouTube | Amazon | iTunes
Contact Guardian
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Contact Consequence of Sound (COS)
Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Sources : Daft Punk Photo | Listen To Random Access Memories | Daft Punk Article | Random Access Memories Review
Purchase : iTunes | Amazon | Walmart
Listen TO Daft Punk : Random Access Memories
Shortly before sunset on Monday night dozens of guests made their way up to the top of the Shard for the UK launch of Daft Punk's latest album, Random Access Memories.
Guests in the landmark skyscraper at London Bridge were heard to remark that it felt like a throwback to a more affluent era, when record labels could regularly afford such flamboyant gestures.
Everything about Daft Punk's fourth album stands out from the rest of the modern industry like the Shard does from the London skyline: bold, divisive, unfeasibly big and impossible to ignore.
Daft Punk's feverishly debated promotional campaign would be spectacular coming from an established superstar. It is the more remarkable for being conceived by two shy Frenchmen who have not been photographed without their robot helmets since the 90s and who made their previous three albums (Homework, Discovery and Human After All) at their homes on modest budgets. Only David Bowie's comeback has generated equivalent excitement this year. It is typical of the attention to detail and insistence on creative independence that has defined Daft Punk's career since their first single 20 years ago.
"The only secret to being in control is to have it in the start," Thomas Bangalter, one half of the Daft Punk band, tells the Observer Magazine this Sunday. "Retaining control is still hard but obtaining control is virtually impossible."
Daft Punk have said that Random Access Memories is an attempt to revive the "magic" of the event albums that soundtracked their childhoods. Professing themselves bored with electronic music, they worked with crack session musicians and some musical heroes in various studios and cities.
The promotional campaign is similarly interested in looking back in order to go forward. A teaser video released on Monday – showing a robot lovingly dropping the needle onto a vinyl copy of the album – sums up the duo's retro-futurist aesthetic.
Daft Punk's sense of heritage explains their alliance with Columbia Records, which celebrates its 125th birthday this year. They approached Columbia last summer – having already financed the recording of the album themselves – with detailed promotional plans, including vast billboards on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
"We wanted it to be a campaign of weight, like when record companies had the confidence that they had a big, big, record," Columbia Records' chief executive, Rob Stringer, recently told Billboard magazine.
Secrecy was enforced by withholding key information and making everyone who came into contact with the record sign strict non-disclosure agreements.
A fascination with enduring American cultural institutions led the duo to break the news of the album with an advertisement on Saturday Night Live, on 2 March, featuring a 15-second loop of the single Get Lucky. Eager fans quickly posted their own extended versions on YouTube.
"The internet allows for a very interactive and playful connection with the audience," said Bangalter. "It's almost like a striptease where you see something gradually instead of uncovering it as a whole."
There has been little traditional promotion by the pair themselves, who dislike interviews and have decided not to tour. They outsourced much of the press publicity to guest performers such as Pharrell Williams and the loquacious Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers.
Each key musician on the record filmed an interview for the Collaborators series on the band's website, shot using 16mm film stock by the veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman.
On 14 April, a clip from the video for Get Lucky was debuted at the Coachella festival in California, inspiring more buzz in 90 seconds than most of the bands on the bill.
Get Lucky, an unusually straightforward disco anthem, had the hardest job of all: setting up the album with a bona fide hit single.
So far it has topped the UK charts for three weeks and broken Spotify's record for the most streams in a single day, attracting the kind of new listener who does not get excited about Saturday Night Live commercials.
The only apparent deviation from Daft Punk's plan was the worldwide streaming of the album on Monday, which replaced an eccentric scheme to debut it at the Wee Waa annual show in New South Wales, Australia, on Friday.
It is uncertain what lessons the industry will draw from the success of Random Access Memories, because no other band has Daft Punk's influence (on other performers such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Kanye West) and mystique.
The pair's last album, in 2005 and entitled Human After All, flopped; their 2007 art movie Electroma was little seen, and their score for the 2010 sci-fi film Tron: Legacy, had mixed reviews.
Only their groundbreaking 2006-7 tour, a pivotal influence on America's subsequent electronic dance music boom, was an unmitigated triumph.
Yet here they are in 2013, looking very much like one of the biggest bands in the world. Perhaps the only lesson is that it is, after all, possible to make a huge impact by being bold and doing things differently.
Critics of the industry dismiss hype as a kind of brainwashing imposed from above, but hype only works if the excitement is widely and genuinely shared.
Guests at the Shard party wondered whether Daft Punk themselves were there – anonymous without their helmets.
They were not, but then they did not need to be. In an era obsessed with celebrity, these two canny Frenchmen have somehow managed to create an unprecedented sense of occasion while staying in the shadows.
Random Access Memories Review
Random Access Memories has been echoing in the metallic domes of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for half a decade. The sheer number of collaborations on RAM, including noted movie composers Paul Williams and Giorgio Moroder, finds Daft Punk building upon their new-flesh narrative, adding to their storied, cinematic mythos of the diminishing boundary between computers and people. What sort of film is this? Bangalter has shared that the group is “[D]rawing a parallel between the brain and the hard drive – the random way that memories are stored.” This tale of robots yearning to live like men is a motif soldered throughout the group’s multimedia career. But with Random Access Memories, the robots have found their souls. All it took was razing the digital foundations that brought the group to fame in the first place.
Within seconds, the record stands out as a more homogenized and sleek listening experience than its predecessor, 2005′s scattershot Human After All. Yet it’s also marked by a playful whimsy that falls short of measuring up to the variety that pulsed through 2001′s Discovery, or the groundbreaking dance exploration found within their fabled 1997 debut, Homework. Instead, Daft Punk cuts ties with itself on RAM by exploring the past through some of the best and boldest collaborative efforts in recent memory.
It’s a rolodex of celebrated artists, both contemporary and preceding, who have inspired Bangalter and Homem-Christo to make music that revisits ’70s discotheques and ’80s funkadelic boat parties. Opener “Give Life Back to Music” features a grinning Nile Rogers and Paul Jackson Jr. throwing down a jazzy fusion of guitar licks over an upbeat, funky processional that could serve as an album summary or even a warning: “Abandon hope of an EDM record all ye who enter here.”
“Giorgio by Moroder” is framed around iconic Italian producer, songwriter, and composer Giorgio Moroder, who shares an autobiographical monologue that starts in the ’60s and works its way to today. Granted, it’s an honorable soliloquy from a Dance Music Hall of Fame inductee, but the spartanism of a spoken word segment – especially one that sounds like Werner Herzog waxing poetic over the Drive soundtrack — three tracks deep into the album is a roadblock and diminished return upon subsequent replays that could be better positioned at the very start or end of the record. It doesn’t help that it’s followed by the album’s weakest moment: the bloated dirge of a piano ballad, “Within”.
It’s not until Julian Casablancas’ inclusion on “Instant Crush” that the album centers back on course. The Strokes frontman previously demonstrated an interest in dance music with his 2009 solo effort, Phrazes for the Young, and judging from this track, one can only hope he lingers around the genre. Casablancas fires off in rapid succession “Now I thought about what I want to say / But I never really know where to go / So I chained myself to a friend / Cause I don’t know what else to do.” The most fascinating thing about the track is how it stands apart from the more traditional vocoding techniques of today. Here, Casablancas manages to come across as an artificial lifeform grasping toward human sentiments, rather than the other way around. It’s a confirmation of his own talents, as well as Daft Punk’s disciplined production and attention to detail.
“Doin’ It Right” is another dreamy partnership that plants Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear, in the driver’s seat. While most of RAM is an amalgamation of collaborative styles, like two white-hot stars sharing energy across each other’s distinct orbits, the gravity of Lennox’s hymnal, Brian Wilson-inspired croon hijacks the song and makes “Doin’ It Right” feel more like a Lennox solo output. It’s intriguing to see the French duo relinquish so much control in the interest of venturing even further out past the buoys of a comfort zone. The fact that Animal Collective and Daft Punk would one day cross paths is also a remarkable curiosity for anyone who paid attention during the early days of MP3 swaps and file-sharing.
But the standout collaborator on Random Access Memories is, without a doubt, N.E.R.D. frontman and Neptunes producer Pharrell Williams, whose coltish funkiness and frisky hooks rain gold upon album highlights “Lose Yourself to Dance” and “Get Lucky”. The former is a siren song that beckons bemused listeners off the streets and into New York’s long disposed Club 54. Once inside, “Get Lucky” captivates with its sophisticated instrumentation and Williams’ bad boy confessions: “She’s up all night ‘til the sun/I’m up all night to get some/She’s up all night for good fun/I’m up all night to get lucky.” A radio edit of “Get Lucky” has been spinning for weeks and will continue on rotation as it’s already one of this year’s strongest singles and an early contender for this summer’s anthem.
Random Access Memories proves that Daft Punk remain masters of their domain, who defend their array of superlatives because of, rather than in spite of, unconventional sound choices. The strings, the drum kits, and yes, even the clarinets, were not expected from the electronic duo, but somehow it all works. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey taught that man became who he is by mastering his tools, not by being a slave to them. Perhaps too, robots can only pretend to be human for so long before parting from their synthetic origins and embracing the tangible.
Contact Daft Punk
Website | Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | YouTube | Amazon | iTunes
Contact Guardian
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Contact Consequence of Sound (COS)
Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Sources : Daft Punk Photo | Listen To Random Access Memories | Daft Punk Article | Random Access Memories Review
Purchase : iTunes | Amazon | Walmart
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