The French electronic duo staged their fourth and final studio album as a tribute to their influences from the funk and disco era.
The narrative of the death of the album format is among the most persistent myths in contemporary popular culture. Since the advent of MP3, it has been said time and again, but at least since the breakthrough of music streaming, song picking and playlist culture have rendered the album obsolete, although a look at the weekly release lists gives a very different impression. French electronic duo Daft Punk wanted to revive the declared dead format in 2013 by staging the release of their fourth album RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES as an event.
On the one hand, this was intended as a homage to the heyday of the album era of the seventies and eighties, when listeners could immerse themselves in an album for months and deal with it due to the limited availability of music. On the other hand, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo also made a concession to a great time for events, in which projects that were thought to be too small quickly fell victim to the attention economy, because the next sow was soon driven through the digital village.
The advertising for the fourth Daft Punk album was largely “analog”, advertisements in music magazines instead of social media campaigns, posters instead of Insta stories. Journalists who wanted to hear the album in advance had to sign a multi-page non-disclosure agreement. The plan worked: RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES reached the top of the album charts in 21 countries and gave Daft Punk their first number 1 in the USA.
Hardly anything on the album hinted at the timing of its creation
Music that should please many people has to make compromises, it has to be based on listening habits, it mustn’t assume too much and demand too much, that would only disturb potential listeners. And so came this at times wistful homage to the disco era of the late ’70s and early ’80s and Daft Punk’s musical influences of the time.
Hardly anything on the album hinted at the timing of its creation. Daft Punk worked with “real” instruments instead of samples, with real people in the studio instead of computers. The disco homage may not have been understood by the majority as such, but as a collection of catchy songs like the pre-single “Get Lucky,” which broke Spotify records with Pharrell Williams’ vocals. In a fluffy production with few rough edges, Daft Punk produced a light-footed disco pop with springy funk basses, strings and Nile Rodgers’ (Chic) characteristic guitar playing.
Too much perfection, too many guest stars, too much nostalgia
Anyway, the guest musicians, without them this project would probably not have been possible: Giorgio Moroder, who tells his life story in “Giorgio By Moroder” and subsequently experienced his third spring as a DJ, Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) and Panda Bear (Animal Collective), who were allowed to sing as guests. RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES is by no means a bad album, what you can blame it for is wanting too much of everything: too much perfection, too many guest stars, too much nostalgia.
For Daft Punk, the album marked another regressive step in their musical development. In the course of their 20-year career, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo had personally reversed the development of electronic dance music. It all started in 1997 with HOMEWORK, a minimal house album that dictated how electronic music sounded for at least a decade. And it ended with RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES, an album that delved deep into the past of the disco era.
In between, the critically acclaimed DISCOVERY (2001) and much-maligned HUMAN AFTER ALL (2005) at least made connections to the zeitgeist. With RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES, the duo had freed themselves from their status as electronic acts and from the burden of having to be musical pioneers. In 2016, Daft Punk featured guests on two songs by The Weeknd, and in 2021 they announced their split.
The “10th Anniversary Edition” will be released as a 3-LP in an elaborate gatefold cover and as a double CD. In addition to the original album, the new edition contains 35 minutes of previously unreleased demos, outtakes and work-in-progress versions such as “The Writing Of Fragments Of Time”, which do not necessarily contribute to a re-evaluation of the album.