{"product_id":"daft-punk-random-access-memories-2021-reissue","title":"Daft Punk – Random Access Memories","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Daft Punk announced they were releasing a new album eight years after 2005's \u003cem\u003eHuman After All\u003c\/em\u003e, fans were starved for new material. \u003cem\u003eThe Tron: Legacy\u003c\/em\u003e score indulged the duo's sci-fi fantasies but didn't offer much in the way of catchy songs, so when \u003cem\u003eRandom Access Memories'\u003c\/em\u003e extensive publicity campaign featured tantalizing clips of a new single, \"Get Lucky,\" their fan base exploded. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut when the album finally arrived, that hugely hyped single was buried far down its track list, emphasizing that most of these songs are very much not like \"Get Lucky\" - or a lot of the pair's previous music, at least on the surface. The album isn't much like 2010s EDM, either. Instead, Daft Punk separate themselves from most contemporary electronic music and how it's made, enlisting some of their biggest influences to help them get the sounds they needed without samples. On Homework's \"Teachers,\" they reverently name-checked a massive list of musicians and producers. Here, they place themselves on equal footing with disco masterminds Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder, who shares his thoughts on making music with wild guitar and synth solos trailing behind him on one of RAM's definitive moments, \"Giorgio by Moroder.\" Elsewhere, Daft Punk celebrate their close relationship with indie music on the lovely \"Doin' It Right,\" which makes the most of Panda Bear's boyish vocals, and on the Julian Casablancas cameo \"Instant Crush,\" which is only slightly more electronic than the Strokes' Comedown Machine. And of course, Pharrell Williams is the avatar of their dancefloor mastery on the sweaty disco of \"Lose Yourself to Dance\" and \"Get Lucky,\" which is so suave that it couldn't help but be an instant classic, albeit a somewhat nostalgic one. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Memories\" is the album's keyword: As Daft Punk celebrate the late '70s and early '80s with deluxe homages like \"Give Life Back to Music\" - one of several terrific showcases for Rodgers - and the spot-on soft rock of the Todd Edwards collaboration \"Fragments of Time,\" they tap into the wonder and excitement in that era's music. A particularly brilliant example is \"Touch,\" where singer\/songwriter Paul Williams conflates his work in Phantom of the Paradise and The Muppet Movie in the song's mystique, charm, and unabashed emotions. Daft Punk have never shied away from \"uncool\" influences or sentimentality, and both are on full display throughout \u003cem\u003eRandom Access Memories.\u003c\/em\u003e It's the kind of grand, album rock statement that listeners of the '70s and '80s would have spent weeks or months dissecting and absorbing - the ambition of Steely Dan, Alan Parsons, and Pink Floyd are as vital to the album as any of the duo's collaborators. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the casual Daft Punk fan, this album might be harder to love than \"Get Lucky\" hinted; it might be too nostalgic, too overblown, a shirking of the group's duty to rescue dance music from the Young Turks who cropped up in their absence. But \u003cem\u003eRandom Access Memories\u003c\/em\u003e is also Daft Punk's most personal work, and richly rewarding for listeners willing to spend time with it. — (via \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/album\/random-access-memories-mw0002521619\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eAllMusic\u003c\/a\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e—\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the electronica landscape of the 1990s, Daft Punk first came over as a novelty. Funny band name, funny sound, funny masks, and a funny (and incredibly fun) hit called “Da Funk,” found on their debut album, Homework. They’ve come a long way since, but the playfulness remains, and so does their ability to surprise. Every new step in their career, whether positive (the landmark\u003cem\u003e Discovery\u003c\/em\u003e, their life-altering pyramid live shows), negative (the inert \u003cem\u003eHuman After All\u003c\/em\u003e, their forgettable score for \u003cem\u003eTron\u003c\/em\u003e), or somewhere in between (the film Electroma) has been met initially with a collective sense of puzzlement: “Now what’s this all about?”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRandom Access Memories\u003c\/em\u003e, the fourth proper studio album from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, continues the trend. But the differences between their first three albums and this one are vast. RAM finds them leaving behind the highly influential, riff-heavy EDM they originated to luxuriate in the sounds, styles, and production techniques of the 1970s and early ’80s. So we get a mix of disco, soft rock, and prog-pop, along with some Broadway-style pop bombast and even a few pinches of their squelching stadium-dance aesthetic. It’s all rendered with an amazing level of detail, with no expense spared. For RAM, Daft Punk recorded in the best studios, they used the best musicians, they added choirs and orchestras when they felt like it, and they almost completely avoided samples, which had been central to most of their biggest songs. Most of all, they wanted to create an album-album, a series of songs that could take the listener on a trip, the way LPs were supposedly experienced in another time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRAM\u003c\/em\u003e’s best songs come in its second half, another clue that it’s meant to be heard in full. It builds as it goes. “Touch”, the record’s literal centerpiece, is where things start to get interesting. It’s telling that the songs featuring the two oldest and deepest influences on the record—Moroder and Paul Williams—are the most over-the-top. (Williams’ role in the 1974 cult film Phantom of the Paradise became an early obsession for Daft Punk.) These pocket symphonies allows the duo to take their concerns to the furthest reaches of ambition—and good taste. “Touch” packs in a Cluster-fied spacey intro, some showtune balladry, a 4\/4 disco section complete with swing music trills, and a sky-scraping choir, all in service of a basic lyrical idea: love is the answer and you’ve got to hold on. It’s strange, disorienting, and emotionally powerful, with a silliness that doesn’t undercut the deep feelings in the least. It encapsulates what makes Daft Punk such an enduring proposition: their relationship to cool. Their vulnerability comes from embracing cheese while also understanding the humor and playfulness in it, holding all these ideas in mind at once. — (via \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/reviews\/albums\/18028-daft-punk-random-access-memories\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003ePitchfork\u003c\/a\u003e)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e—\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's a bunch of robots, surely they can't make a masterpiece... Right?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo I have heard this album a few times like 5 years ago, and Get Lucky used to be one of my favorite songs when I was a younger kid, but I genuinely completely forgot this album (my memory is destroyed so I don't remember anything lol) and haven't really listened to many other Daft Punk songs. All I knew was that Beyond was my favorite song, I remembered that. So yeah I had to return to this and properly review it, I mean it's an absolutely iconic album with an iconic cover. I'm also a huge Disco fan so I was hoping I'll still like this nowadays.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd god damn I do still love this thing. I was kind of expecting to not like it that much anymore, but nah nah nah... This thing is amazing, from front to back. Fantastic production, amazing synth, guitar, and bass work, amazing vocals, and unmatched VIBES.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo for real, this album is so vibey. And that's a running memo for most Disco music, that's why I love the genre lol, because I'm all about the vibes, and this album offers an extreme amount of them. Such good positive late-night vibes to just bump. Most of them sound gorgeous and eargasmic to the ear.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese guys' creativity is just on another planet. The way they incorporate their robotic vocals over these gorgeous instrumentals and amazing lyrics is just beyond me (no pun intended). Speaking of Beyond, that song is an absolute masterpiece, I LOVE that song. Such a beautiful song, it's my favorite one here and always will be their best song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstant Crush and Get Lucky are classic bangers, Touch is an 8-minute journey, Doin' It Right is an ANTHEM with the catchiest of vocals, Within is a beautiful short song that's just a vibe and the first two songs are just super cozy, pleasant songs that sound amazing to the ears. It just gently tickles your ear with how beautiful it is.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI mean there's not much I can criticize about this album, it's amazing front to back with very few flaws. God I wish people made more Disco albums in modern times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso, the cover art is iconic and matches the music perfectly. What else can I say? This thing is amazing, and I was really surprised I still like it this much today, but hey. If you're gonna bring the VIBES, I'm gonna automatically love it. And you know what kind of VIBES I'm talking about. — (via \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.albumoftheyear.org\/user\/remisreviews\/album\/6162-random-access-memories\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eAOTY\u003c\/a\u003e)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/album\/4m2880jivSbbyEGAKfITCa?utm_source=generator\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e↓\u003cbr\u003eLabel: Columbia\u003cbr\u003eFormat: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Repress, Stereo, 180 Gram\u003cbr\u003eReissued: 2021 \/ Originally Released: 2013\u003cbr\u003eGenre: Electronic, Funk \/ Soul, Pop\u003cbr\u003eStyle: Disco, Funk, Electro, Synth-pop\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFile under: Electronic \/\/ House \/ Electro \/ Techno\u003cbr\u003e⦿\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Columbia \/ Sony Music","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46607426060446,"sku":"888837168618","price":60.0,"currency_code":"SGD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0584\/5434\/3838\/files\/61Ia07wdZQL-_UF894-1000_QL80.jpg?v=1773482962","url":"https:\/\/theanalogvault.com\/products\/daft-punk-random-access-memories-2021-reissue","provider":"The Analog Vault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}