Random Access Memories wasn't revelatory music-nor was it Daft Punk's finest work-but it would be remiss to ignore its significance within pop music history. Beyond the sound, many of these songs sprawled with the endless groove that defined disco, and indulged the lengthy, extended arrangements of the genre, too. It certainly sounded expensive, each sound polished and carefully thought-out, the mixdowns spacious and '70s-style, fit for audiophile setups. The music was largely recorded in famous recording studios across Los Angeles, and cost Daft Punk over one million dollars. (That's what made the track " Teachers," in which they shouted out a long list of house music innovators by name, so endearing.) Random Access Memories looked towards disco, capturing the gold-plated, classy funk of Rodger's hit-making work as Chic. For this next project, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo put down their machines and employed esteemed session musicians instead, plucking from a pool of dreamy collaborators that included several musicians that were revered in the '70s and '80s, such as Chic's Nile Rodgers, disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder and singer Paul Williams.ĭaft Punk are beloved by multiple generations in part because of their ability to not only channel but also honour the artists that came before them. The decision was spurred on by the challenging experience of working with an orchestra while writing the score for the 2010 film Tron: Legacy. When it was time for Daft Punk's next move, the reputation they set at the California festival allowed them to announce Random Access Memories there seven years later with pop star-level fanfare.Īfter earning widespread recognition for their robot-like sound, the duo took an iconoclastic left turn: they embarked on a mission to recreate the kind of music that existed before the digital production and sampling techniques that made Daft Punk chart-toppers in the first place. Replete with a giant gleaming pyramid and LED screens, Daft Punk's stage setup exhibited production values unprecedented at the time, and inspired a legion of big-ticket EDM artists like Skrillex. In pale comparison to Discovery, which was made painstakingly over two years and promoted with an elaborate Leiji Matsumoto-supervised anime film, Human After All was recorded quickly in two weeks, mixed in four and released with minimal promotion.īut in 2006, a historic Coachella set (plus the ensuing tour and live album) renewed interest in the duo and helped usher in a new era of dance music. Critics derided it as rudimentary, repetitive and uninspiring, the antithesis of everything their previous album represented. After the career-making high of 2001's Discovery-the album that gave dance music the technicolour earworms "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"-they released Human After All, an album widely considered their worst. These achievements might have been unthinkable in 2005, when it appeared Daft Punk had fallen off track. It was impossible to not hear or see Daft Punk around the time they released the album in 2013, and the mainstream infiltration led to Random Access Memories winning four Grammys the following year. The record secured their spot at the top of the electronic music world and had a foothold on the pop charts, too. Random Access Memories, the most human album of the helmet-wearing pair's discography, was a clever album to close the Daft Punk chapter. Bangalter, after two decades of cosplaying as a robot, recently admitted that the last thing that he "would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot." In the two years since, they've reissued their classic albums while Thomas Bangalter, the duo's more public-facing and talkative half, released a solo orchestral album. The song most poignant to Daft Punk fans on the tenth anniversary reissue of the duo's last album, Random Access Memories, is probably the one that arrives at the very end-a choral rendition of the original album's "Touch" that soundtracked the film announcing their disbandment in 2021.
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