Daft Punk, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, when they do give interviews, talk a lot about their image. How the band is perceived in their robot costumes versus the actual humans, the difference between their private lives making the music and the public one releasing and promoting it. Random Access Memories is their most affected album yet, the most concerned with their place in music culture and the constant need for them to be a presence, for them to comment in some way, even if it’s through a vocoder.
Random Access Memories is a throwback; an album released through a capital “M” major, Columbia, with an advertising and production budget to match. The things a major can afford for one of its biggest acts, the national television commercials, billboards over Sunset Boulevard, these things are supposed to be viewed and digested as something refreshing in a disposable music release cycle. Instead, it just further reinforces the album’s purpose. This is a big record, an album that sounds inconsumable, too rich and dense to be taken in at once. Random Access Memories can only be understood in fragments, loudly coalescing as you listen to it serially.
In Ryan Dombal’s feature for Pitchfork, he mentions Random Access Memories has the “the same sort of eclectic reach that would be found at legendary clubs like New York's Paradise Garage, where a normal night could include songs by James Brown, the Police, Steve Miller Band, Talking Heads, and Kraftwerk.” The album quickly shifts, from track to track, in genre and scope. Daft Punk don’t just take from electronic music, a genre they’ve had a major role in shaping the past two decades culturally and musically, but also from G-Funk, soul and prog-rock. The genre pastiche prevents Random Access Memories from flowing seamlessly; instead forcing the listener to find their own connections between tracks as diverse as Daft Punk does Broadway “Touch” into Studio-54 cocaine groove single “Get Lucky.”
“Touch” is Daft Punk at their most overblown, an overwrought epic featuring Paul Williams, the man responsible for Kermit The Frog’s smash, “The Rainbow Connection,” as well as a former contract songwriter for A&M records, the kind of old-fashioned musician that doesn’t really exist in today’s music landscape. The song works as a parable for the fictional robots the actual men behind the masks play, a searching plainly sung almost-ballad about a man who “almost feels real.” The group have spoken a lot about using real musicians on this record, telling Simon Reynolds in a piece on the band in the New York Times, “’It’s an infinity of nuance, in the shuffles and the grooves,’ Mr. Bangalter said, knocking over his drink in his excitement. ‘These things are impossible to create with machines.’” “Touch” is richly layered and orchestrated, almost too much at first, but in the way that some of the most literal and blunt pop songs in the modern Western music cannon are, the kind that stick with you even when they haven’t been heard in years, remembering their chord changes and choruses by heart.
This album is as much about who brought Daft Punk here, as it is about what the group mean right now. Paul Williams first showed up on the friend’s radar as teenagers when they saw Williams’ movie “Phantom of the Paradise,” where Williams plays a Phil Specter-ish figure pulling the strings behind a musician wearing a mask. Bangalter describes it to Reynolds as “our favorite film, the foundation for a lot of what we’re about artistically.” Another major influence is Giorgio Moroder, producer of the disco evergreens by Donna Summer, “I Feel Love” and “Love To Love You Baby,” who appears on “Giorgio By Moroder.” His contribution is a spoken word one, giving one of the most exciting lectures you’ll ever hear about his use of the synthesizer and what it’s meant for modern music. It’s a confident--possibly arrogant--choice for a third track on a long awaited, sure to be hit album, but there’s something in its bombast that speaks to something greater. It’s Daft Punk reaching out for transcendence, a massive tune that could soundtrack an intergalactic stadium brawl.
Williams sings about “a tourist in a dream” on “Touch” which could also describe the collaborators on Random Access Memories. Quickly integrated into Daft Punk’s world and then just as quickly exiting. In the promotional video, which simultaneously premiered on the Coachella Polo Grounds stage screens and then quickly uploaded online, the list of collaborators practically dwarfed the previous snippet of “Get Lucky.” There’s past collaborators, like Todd Edwards on the best Michael McDonald song you’ve never heard “Fragments of Time”—who also appeared on Discovery’s dance-floor come-on “Face To Face”—to newer ones like Pharrell, Nile Rodgers, Julian Casablancas on the best Phoenix song you’ve never heard “Instant Crush,” and Panda Bear. Taking their turns in stride, Daft Punk molding their songs to get the most out of each. Surprisingly, the most straightforward dance track is “Doin’ It Right” featuring the usually meditative Panda Bear. It was the last track they finished on an album that Daft Punk have been working on since 2008, and the only track that sounds new in an obvious way. The hi-hat clap is reminiscent of the most futuristic music coming out of Chicago footwork, like DJ Rashad and Traxman as well as trap-rap producers like DJ Mustard and Young Chop. On Random Access Memories it serves as both an admonishment to electronic music producer’s the duo claim are artistically stagnant and as a reminder that when they really want to, Daft Punk can make tracks with a computer better than anyone. As Bangalter told GQ, “"It's maybe not 'Kill the father,’ but it's like: Things have to move on."
Nile Rodgers, whose hits with Chic and as a producer for some of the most ubiquitous singles of the 80’s, like Bowies “Let’s Dance” and Madonna’s “Like A Virgin,” propelled him to icon status, is perhaps Random Access Memories most influential voice. “They wanted the classic Nile,” he told Simon Reynolds, “almost like we were doing a record back in the day.” His slinky, impossibly catchy guitar playing is present on three tracks, album opener “Give Life Back To Music”--a prog meets disco jam that features a circular mantra, “Let the music of your life, get right back to music,”-- as well as would-be-single and already single, “Lose Yourself To Dance,” and “Get Lucky.” The latter two feature Pharrell on vocals, arguably one of the most important producers of the 2000’s, responsible for the icy hip-hop classic from Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury. While Pharrell’s vocals are serviceable, they’re low-points on what should be victory laps, slight smudges on an otherwise immaculately clean visage. “Lose Yourself To Dance” is especially startling, featuring a gorgeous Dr. Dre breakdown that sounds like an homage to Daft Punk’s adopted home of Los Angeles.
Random Access Memories sounds expensive and by all counts for a modern record in an age where a platinum record is rare, it is, telling Rolling Stone, "We spent more than a million dollars making it, easily," Bangalter says. "But that's not important.” Whether that money bought the same sort of cultural cache as Discovery, musical immortality, will remain to be seen. For now, it’s proving a surprisingly elastic record that has shaped the mass music discussion for the past two months. It’s an event record, and those have proven rare lately.
Grade: A
Thanks for finally writing about > "Album Review: Daft Punk - Random Access Memories" < Liked it!
My website ... leparfait.
net
I have been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any
interesting article like yours. It's pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all website owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be a lot more useful than ever before.
Review my page :: optimal stacks
I am regular reader, how are you everybody? This piece of writing posted
at this web site is actually fastidious.
Feel free to surf to my web blog ... Garcinia Cambogia Supplement
he;;o! my name is miguel antonio guadalahara st. pierre and i have exciting offer for you to lookat!
please visit my website http://www.megapartybus.com for detail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!