robertlove said:

First listen: noSecond listen: oh yeah! There are some killer tracks on this album. Instant crush, The game of love, i really like the album version of Get lucky, much better.And well, Lose yourself to dance is with the best they ever released, I listened to it at the gym today and it gave me great energy.I mean how funky is this track???

[Edited 5/18/13 7:33am]

[Edited 5/18/13 7:34am]

Yesss...the drums just POUND

Daft Punk, ‘Random Access Memories’

8

SPIN Essentials

• SPIN Rating:8 of 10

• • Listen:

    Spotify

Release Date: May 21, 2013
Label: Columbia

So the album opens like an overture to a Siegfried & Roy revue: smoke machines and lasers, spandex and glitter, roller-skaters and fire-breathers, blown-back hair, gold lamé, rhinestones, dancers, a bear — the whole nine — as meanwhile our hosts, digital magicians Thomas and Guy-Manuel, are lowered down on a sequin-clad, feather-trussed platform, smiles plastered across their cyborg visages, arms gesturing as if to say, in the gayest voice ever run through a vocoder, Boy have we got a show for you!

Costumes and crescendos, set pieces and guest stars, a loose concept, big budgets, and one helluva of a marketing campaign: If Daft Punk's Random Access Memories sounds like a new Broadway musical, that's because it might as well be.

Starlight Express, Jesus Christ Superstar, the lovechild of Bob Fosse and George Lucas: These are good touch points. Cameo, Sister Sledge, Kid Creole and the Coconuts: also fine. "I wanted to do an album with the sounds of the '50s, the sounds of the '60s, of the '70s, and then have a sound of the future." That's Giorgio Moroder's plainspoken, Schwarzenegger-accented recounting of his own musical history on the third track ("Giorgio by Moroder"), which none too subtly doubles as the record's thesis: stylistically traverse a shit-ton of decades and genres, employ a whole bunch of vintage instruments, from mics all the way to guest vocalists (one of these dudes is in his seventies), vaguely nod in the direction of the "Future," seemingly one in which Huggy Bear is president.

To wit: That opener, "Give Life Back to Music," kicks off with bombastic, distorted-guitar punches before turning all funky-slinky, a total Prince move. "Fragments of Time" boasts the effortless rhythms and gentle choruses of Hall & Oates, while "Beyond" nicks the smooth groove of Michael MacDonald's "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)." Hints of Goblin and Tangerine Dream show up on "Motherboard" and "Contact"; "Instant Crush" owes a debt to the Police. But, of course, Daft Punk's most satisfying throwback is to themselves (the group is 20 freakin' years old, after all): "Giorgio," "Touch," and the Pharrell-abetted "Get Lucky" all have moments of deep, locked-in grooves that will sate next year's Coachella crowds whether Daft Punk actually show up in person or not.

The angle of your dangle, however, seems of secondary concern to our heroes. They're primarily interested in evoking the golden age of studio excess, and indeed, the best part of RAM is the oddball cast of characters Daft Punk have assembled to execute this vision. Legendary producer, Chic mastermind, and Whoopi Goldberg impersonator Nile Rodgers joins forces with Paul Jackson, Jr. (who played on Thriller) for the tightest rhythm-guitar attack in recent memory, as "the most recorded drummer in history," a.k.a., John "JR" Robinson (he played on Off the Wall), lays a concrete foundation beneath the proceedings.

Julian Casablancas, meanwhile, is still a douche, but "Instant Crush" at least proves Daft Punk know better than to let his flaccid croak hit tape without some serious vocoder massage. Not so with Panda Bear, whose double-tracked vocals on "Doin' It Right" are as lysergic and endearing as ever. Then there is the great P. Williams — no, not Pharrell, but Paul — septuagenarian composer of the Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays" and The Love Boat theme, here evoking Hedwig for "Touch," widely and rightly acknowledged as the album's centerpiece. Here's why "Touch" is the album's centerpiece: It sounds like the Muppets if Miss Piggy were Donna Summer and Kermit were Barry Gibb. Nodding to Cabaret and The Wiz, employing a children's choir and a string section, spanning decades, moods, sonic textures, and varying degrees of decent musical judgment, "Touch" epitomizes RAM's ambitions: grandiose to a fault, but hard not to love.

Indeed, the whole thing is so outsized and overwrought, so flailing and flamboyant, that you kind of have to grade it on a curve, alongside such other marvels of media spectacle as The Wall, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Avatar, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, etc. It belongs in that Musical Museum of WTF, maybe not front and center, but perhaps over by the rest rooms, next to the Use Your Illusions. It's the increasingly rare widescreen collision of talent, resources, and ham-fisted quackery that we just don't get very often these days, and it's in that sense that Daft Punk best accomplish their goal of evoking all these bygone decades, the days of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's, Rumours and Thriller and Songs in the Key of Life, the days when making records literally drove people insane.

It's not that RAM necessarily measures up to those classics, but as an homage, it's perfectly enjoyable, which oddly enough brings us back to what these French hipsters have always done best. The commentariat are already wondering why this is such a departure, but it's really not. Daft Punk's whole shtick is ironic distance. They're not robots, they're "robots." They "rock" and want you to "dance." In that sense, this is absolutely in keeping with the band's legacy. It is theater: absolutely sincere and totally fake.

jasontate said:

Okey dokey, so here is what I, ReddishBrownOne, think of RAm after a few days of obsessice listenign (my god, I never thought I''d be obsessed by those two french goofballs in the helmets )

- The album as a whole is sonically beautiful. Every drum hit, guitar scratchand robo beep sounds like it's full on in the room with you. Credit to DP for making the time for this to happen. If you want to hear this album properly, do yourself a favour and ditch the shitty laptop speakers, and try the vinyl version through a decent system I think one reviewer said that in a previous era it would go alongside with Aja and Dark side of the Moon as one of those records people use to show off stereo equipmnet.

- Some tracks ('Instant Crush', 'Lose Yourself', 'Get Lucky') are just like a hit of pure musical cheesecake. Sweet and satisfying.

- A couple of tracks ('Touch', 'Moroder', 'Contact') are madder opening up a bag full of monekys.

- The slower tracks ('Within', 'Game of Love') are, truth be told, a little dull, but perhaps they make sense in the grander sweep of the album.

- Love the glass keyboard in the album artwork!

So, it's definitely an album in the good old fashioned sense of the word. Get a good system, pour yourself a large rum and coke, and lose yourself to Les Robots.

Lose Yourself to Dance needs something more, it seems very slow and needs a bit more chorus to it lol.

Listening to Get Lucky it would have been cool if MJ had comeback vocal on one of Daft Punk's songs. Useless daydream.

They can do no wrong in my eyes.

OfftheWall said:

To me this project sounds completely finished.

Until you do a remake that is better than the original that is, like that guy that remade "Get Lucky". But that's a cheat (the original has already been made).

My brother has these and all the detailed mini leather work is awesome.

The more I listen to it,the more I really like this album.With summer on the horizon,I needed a really good,new album to be my summer soundtrack.This album might do the trick

It's really nice hearing Nile Rodgers' guitar on several tracks......making me think of Chic and all the great jams that they had.This album has a very nostalgic vibe,and I like that.

paisleypark4 said:

OfftheWall said:

Lose Yourself to Dance needs something more, it seems very slow and needs a bit more chorus to it lol.

Listening to Get Lucky it would have been cool if MJ had comeback vocal on one of Daft Punk's songs. Useless daydream.

O yea i know what u mean. Sounds unfinished. The fade out has the first verse starting over again like a loop. Confused.

"Lose Yourself To Dance","Get Lucky" and "Give Life Back To Music" are the three tracks that I instantly liked.These are great tunes that sound better and better with each listen.

Yay Yay

unique said:

i think it's pretty good. definately a grower. very different from previous stuff, it's very 1978 sounding. they seem to have turned their back on EDM at least for now and slating it in interviews. it sounds a bit more like the dancey stuff by air

Because "EDM" is a joke. Electronic music has existed for decades and it will continue to exist for as long as human beings are around to make it. "EDM" is the lowest form of electronic music, and thereby the easiest for the lay person to understand. This has allowed it gain some small foothold in the minds of the average music listener, whereas most other electronic music continues to live VERY FAR underground and is mostly completely ignored by anyone outside of the small circles of hardcore listeners who are actually looking for it, or the few music blogs that write about it. When Daft Punk's last album was released they term "EDM" didn't even exist. So I perfectly well understand their desire to stay far, FAR away from getting lumped into that homogeneous cauldron of dreck.

Yay. But it's definitely a strange beast. It's a throwback to the future. A retro dream about what disco funk would sound like if Daft Punk had created it in 2025. I definitely agree that it's a work of art, not just a piece of music. But that just means it's going to divide people more than the average release, with a lot of people falling strongly on one side of the argument or the other.

G3000 said:

This is the way "Get Lucky" should sound.

HitsDailyDouble Report: Daft Punk's new album is a smash

May 22, 2013

Rob Stringer’s Columbia appears to have a massive global hit on its hands with Daft Punk’s much-ballyhooed Random Access Memories. Team Columbia, led by EVP/GM Joel Klaiman, is in the process of pulling off a rare feat, as “Get Lucky,” the lead single of this genre-defying album, is poised to reach critical mass at Rhythmic, Top 40 and Alternative.

This phenomenon brings to mind OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”—but those multi-format hits crossed to Alternative after breaking at Rhythmic and Pop, whereas “Get Lucky” is climbing the three airplay charts simultaneously, along with Hot AC and a smattering of adds at Triple A and Urban as well.

While DP has been putting out cutting-edge electronic albums since the mid-’90s, they’ve never previously scored a 100k debut in the U.S. But initial retail reports suggest a first week of 300k or better, the result of a brilliantly conceived and executed campaign overseen by marketing head Scott Greer, which has in essence mainstreamed a brand that up to now has existed within the parameters of cultdom.

While the strategy—along with the album’s retro-futuristic sound—has inevitably alienated a portion of the group’s EDM core fans, the label has had a far bigger target audience in mind since Stringer and Columbia PresidentAshley Newton signed DP months ago. The result: an album people across the demographic range believe they need to own. The evidence is abundant, including what may be the biggest worldwide preorder in iTuneshistory, including 100k +/- in the U.S. alone, around 27k in physical preorders on Amazon and a new modern-era record on vinyl preorders with 10k+.

One beneficiary of this breakthrough is Pharrell Williams, who appears to be on the verge of finally becoming the big star that many believed he could be years ago, the dual result of his lead vocal appearance on “Get Lucky,” which he co-wrote and co-produced, and on Robin Thicke’s concurrently breaking “Blurred Lines,” which Williams wrote, produced and appears on. Belatedly or not, Williams (who’s managed by Ron Laffitte) is on the verge of having his most significant career moment. The multi-talented veteran, who was also signed to Columbia by Stringer and Newton, is working on a solo album for the label. Chances are, it won’t be long before the former N.E.R.D. leader is selling records under his own name.

Cerebus said:

YES

I can't get over Instant Crush