daft punk random access memories japanese edition

Daft punk random access memories japanese edition full#
Daft punk random access memories japanese edition mac#

Most of all, “Random Access Memories” is unquestionably the album the duo wanted to make - which often seems to be left out of the revisionism issue, although it should be at the center of it. Several songs have multiple chapters, particularly the album’s centerpiece, the Paul Willams-sung “Touch,” which has a breathtakingly beautiful middle section starring the orchestra and choir the instrumental closer, “Contact,” is one of the most exciting songs I’ve ever heard in my life, largely due to Hakim’s sprinting drums. It presents a different perspective on the mathematical melodicism and repetition of the duo’s best electronic music - equally influenced by Kraftwerk, Bach and Phillip Glass - but with organic instruments and orchestras and choirs playing with near-flawless precision, crispness and technical expertise the Grammys do not award best-engineered album lightly.

Daft punk random access memories japanese edition full#

Over four years and a million dollars in the making - the duo paid for the recording themselves, guaranteeing their full autonomy - it is unquestionably brilliant and filled with some of the most beautiful, exciting and emotional music of its time. Many of the album’s greatest moments are instrumental.īut despite the second-guessing and occasional skippable moments, the album’s genius shines through now more than ever. A song called “Lose Yourself to Dance” has a slow, thudding rhythm that’s almost impossible to dance to. The album opens with a garish instrumental fanfare reminiscent of Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” They brought in dance-music visionary Giorgio Moroder - who’d masterminded Donna Summer’s classic hits - not for anything conventionally musical but for an autobiographical spoken-word segment. Objectively, it plods in places, and even more objectively, some of the collaborators and how they were utilized seemed to have been based on whimsical if not perverse reasons: Daft Punk could have worked with virtually any vocalist on earth they’d wanted - Adele, Bjork, Celia Bartoli, Tuvan throat singers - but true to their quintessentially French nature, they defied expectations and chose Pharrell (known more as a producer than a singer), septuagenarian Paul Williams (known more as a songwriter), the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas (with his voice almost unrecognizably autotuned), Todd Edwards (yachts ahoy!) and the duo themselves singing through a vintage ‘70s vocoder, with only Animal Collective’s Panda Bear rating as a truly great, if eccentric singer.Īnd the challenges weren’t limited to the vocalists. Bored with electronics, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter “wanted to do what we used to do with machines and samplers, but with people,” the latter said.įor all its success and adulation at the time, “Random Access Memories” - which is re-released today in a lavish 10th anniversary edition, with a fascinating 35-minute companion album of previously unreleased material - is a challenging and often-contrarian album, and viewed outside of the heat of the moment of its arrival, those factors have become clearer (as part of a sort of revisionist history, Pitchfork recently revised its score down to a 6.8). There are guitar solos, tinkling electric pianos, ‘70s funk bass, piledriving drums and even acoustic guitars.

Daft punk random access memories japanese edition mac#

Fans expecting another electronic masterpiece instead they got a deliberately retro album that intentionally used the technology and recording techniques of the ‘70s and ‘80s to evoke the pristine, perfectionist grooves of Michael Jackson, Chic, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac and others - and even unfurled a yacht-rock flag on “Fragments of Time.” It has orchestras, choirs and a battery of top-notch musicians including pioneering Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers, virtuoso bassist Nathan East, pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz and powerhouse drummer Omar Hakim. Yet it was a drastic about-face for the pioneering duo, whose electronic and dance music of the previous 15-odd years had spawned countless influencees, and whose world-shaking 2006-7 tour basically spawned EDM. At the time of its release, the supernova of cool around Daft Punk was so pervasive - and the hits from the album, particularly “Get Lucky,” were so ubiquitous - that it topped charts all around the world, won five Grammys (including album of the year and best-engineered album) and got a whopping 8.8 score from Pitchfork, a publication that played no small role in the longrunning French duo’s rise. When Daft Punk launched its fourth and presumably final mission statement, “Random Access Memories,” into the atmosphere 10 long years ago, it was greeted with the kind of genre- and generation-spanning adulation that’s rare in any art form.