Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

I was just advocating for evenhandedness/honesty about the fact that a lot of what is doing the heavy lifting w/r/t all the attention its getting is that daft punk have kinda become pop stars since their last album.

How have Daft Punk become pop stars since HAF? Might be different in America but surely Discovery era was their pop star peak?

I dunno if even now I'd call DP pop stars in America, but their profile was considerably increased with the 2007 tour and Kanye West's "Stronger".

how many times has this thread been over the fact that their profile has soared in the U.S. in recent years? Discovery's Billboard album chart peak: #44. Human After All: #98. Tron Soundtrack: #4. this new one is a lock for #1. xp

in my (american) experience their fame is also greatest among people who were about 16 when discovery was released.

i love this song!

i think my favourite pharrell line is 'luh'

If MJ wasn't dead, and he wasn't a peado do you think it would have been a Niles Rodgers/MJ cross over? That could have been awesome. Right?

#3 in UK Singles chart after just 48 hours on sale

Anyone who thinks Pharrell is ridiculous/a gratuitous MJ knock off today needs to flash back to this NOW:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=mCAYStI0_EY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmCAYStI0_EY

(Yachts! Models! Kanye! Abject insincerity! I actually like the song but the video is so dumb.)

moreso than xeroxing mj pharrell is just as much a random access memory in himself; he doesnt have to be on top form because at this point he's not agent like that

the commingled artist/audience symbiosis of this whole dp event bears greater examination imo - the "mass psychosis" i was referring to rather than just putting it all at the feet of the marketing campaign

basically when i was talking about something rotten at the heart of this it was more about its unsettlingly rapturous reception, for what it is - to not be able to find elsewhere and all around in the world what this song offers seems like a fundamental act of rejection, a fear & loathing of the here & now

it's a fun tune though, don't get me wrong

SMH at anyone seriously repping for those Skream disco mixes over this though.

or kathy diamond:

Last year's KDMS album had a handful of Chic tributes that walk all over the rest of "Get Lucky".

i assume you're talking about kinky dramas and magic stories, which handful of tracks are you talking about? i love kathy diamond but this album kinda sucked, they get about as close to chic as jamiriquai

did someone already post the pitch-shifted pharrell version

ja

xxxp fair point perhaps in terms of quality but i'd still argue those skream mixes etc are more stimulating as art just cos like, why did these uk types inexplicably suddenly veer in that direction? and astutely so as it turns out? it all has a sense of life to it whereas with dp it's just hey remember this... remember us... again...

basically when i was talking about something rotten at the heart of this it was more about its unsettlingly rapturous reception, for what it is - to not be able to find elsewhere and all around in the world what this song offers seems like a fundamental act of rejection, a fear & loathing of the here & now

those terms feel excessive but i get what you're saying here. i suppose there's a good bit of disconnect tho between DP's audience and the audience for dance music as genre. and the conversation pointlessly circles between DP fans going "but this is great!" and dance fans going "but there's other stuff like this that's better!" where both sets are really approaching this song from different perspectives

DP are popularizers with good ears and good presence, in short

god bloss em

or kathy diamond:

/Last year's KDMS album had a handful of Chic tributes that walk all over the rest of "Get Lucky"./

i assume you're talking about kinky dramas and magic stories, which handful of tracks are you talking about? i love kathy diamond but this album kinda sucked, they get about as close to chic as jamiriquai

Good keyboard textures, nice vocals and pretty much no tunes < Chic.

DP are popularizers with good ears and good presence, in short

Maybe true of "Face to Face" -- but how is that true of "Get Lucky"?

Agree the KDMS album wasn't all that, but "High Wire" was one track I kept coming back to.

went to a disco put on by 'deep disco heads' this weekend and had a few drunken conversations with random people about this song, and this is typical of what these people had to say (nicked from a facebook post):

"Loving how Daft Punk have captured the spirit of 70s disco with their lyric "we're up all night to get lucky". Clearly they've "come to far to give up" who they've become - disposable sold out pop stars. Rant over, now lets get on with playing some proper music :-)

still love you nile
"

people all like oh no my sacred disco music is getting popular with the kids

hearing way more stevie wonder than MJ in the vocal on this especially the way he wrestles with the low notes

fair point perhaps in terms of quality but i'd still argue those skream mixes etc are more stimulating as art just cos like, why did these uk types inexplicably suddenly veer in that direction? and astutely so as it turns out? it all has a sense of life to it whereas with dp it's just hey remember this... remember us... again...

Skream's spent more than enough time on the international circuit to know which way the wind is blowing (ie away from dubstep) and there's a pretty strong element of any port in a storm going on here.

nah, it's alright not to really care either way but you're handwaving it away there. international/not-dubstep/any port leads you to a hundred other possibilities before you end up at ersatz 80s disco boogie

But that sound that Skream's now adopting has been all over Europe for years, especially in the sunnier climbs that make up a lot of his touring schedule now - he's probably been immersed in it. Making the straight jump to jacking Hot Creations is probably the only thing that would have been more obvious.

not really 'ersatz 80s disco boogie' has been typical of what you'll hear if you go out in east london for a good 5-6 years now

xpost

It's not even that different from DP, it's all part of the same embarrassed sidling away from the American scene they helped to spawn.

Yo Amanda Palmer, I heard you like fans, so I gave fans to your fans so you can brag while you blog.

afaik he has played old disco sets a few times in the mid/late 2000s, could be just a thing that he was always into.

he = Skream

wait, list me up a couple of specific euroshoreditch jams you two think corroborate this skream super obviousness

rtc, how is your point different from the standard genre fan beef with popular artists? ie "People think x represents dance/R&B/hip hop at its best but they haven't heard all this much better, less well-known stuff in that genre". I've heard that countless times (mostly from Lex tbh). And this is the most breezy, straightforward track on a varied, ambitious record so discussing the innovation/relevance of Daft Punk 2013 in the light of Get Lucky alone is pointless. To make this record work they need a hit straight off the bat so they've chosen the song that sounds most like a hit. It's not all like this.

I'll happily do so this evening. It's a sound I have a lot of time for and the Skream disco remixes I've heard are corrections of fairly well worn tropes. They're not bad, but the idea there's any inherent artistic worthiness above and beyond the Daft Punk single is kinda nonsense given they're all part of the same drift.

rtc, how is your point different from the standard genre fan beef with popular artists? ie "People think x represents dance/R&B/hip hop at its best but they haven't heard all this much better, less well-known stuff in that genre".

I don't think that's really the point he's making? The line of attack is more "this represents flight from modernity" rather than yr standard Lexian "why is no one listening to all the better stuff in this genre?"

Ah, OK, that's not how I read it but I don't buy the "flight from modernity" line either.

I don't think it's even "flight from modernity"? More like "flight from presentism".

Yeah that's a better way of putting it.

this is the sort of music i'd hear out around 2008 at the horse and groom, disco bloodbath, visions video bar, star of bethnal green, that place that's now called the book club, various secret location lol warehouse parties and these days at super trendy places like dalston superstore / vogue fabrics. usually mixed in with some house, disco n all that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TkN8HIRV-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVj1m8uy5AM

as for people making that stuff these days, most of it is edit based, every big name edit guy has done a boogie track, didn't terje do a kc and the sunshine band edit 'boogie'?

The present needs more Nile Rodgers-inspired rhythm riffin'.

So is the "flight from presentism" worse if it's a dance act than if it's someone getting wildly excited about mbv or the Bowie album? Is it the idea that electronic music (even though it's not really an electronic album) has to go future or go home? Because DP (a) have been together for 20 years and (b) have long been obsessed with homaging their youthful inspirations.

His guitar is so typically terrific on this xp, every sixteenth note accented individually and lovingly, like you'd get at whole foods or somewhere. It gives a kind of latin busyness to the groove, not that it feels or sounds latin in any other way.

has futurism always been embedded in DP's image?

rtc, how is your point different from the standard genre fan beef with popular artists? ie "People think x represents dance/R&B/hip hop at its best but they haven't heard all this much better, less well-known stuff in that genre". I've heard that countless times (mostly from Lex tbh)

idk, i dunno if i'd do that w/r/t a legit pop act like daft punk, it's mostly aimed at stuff that's beloved of critics (who should have heard of the better, less well-PRed stuff).

"fear of presentism" is v accurate here, and it's absolutely the same as the mbv/bowie excitement - there's a real air of seizing on to a familiar, safe name bolstered by both nostalgia from one's adolescence and the knowledge that it's canonical and no one's gonna mock you for getting it wrong

has futurism always been embedded in DP's image?

ROBOTS!!!!!!11111111

the skream remixes are 100% better than this btw in both nebulous presentism terms and in actual musical terms

i find the lyrics of the daft punk a bit tired too, if not actively sleazy

"fear of presentism" is v accurate here, and it's absolutely the same as the mbv/bowie excitement - there's a real air of seizing on to a familiar, safe name bolstered by both nostalgia from one's adolescence and the knowledge that it's canonical and no one's gonna mock you for getting it wrong

Was it fear of presentism when Kate Bush released Aerial?

If you were to talk about this album in relation to, say, the Justin Timberlake record, THEN I'd be prepared to concede it's part of the same phenomenon.

the fear of presentism is manifest in the build-up - the non-stop chatter before you can hear more than a tiny bit of music. when the buzz is so overwhelming before there's anything there to seize on to, it's sort of telling that the music is not entirely the point. there's pre-release anticipation but this is something else.

it's true of artists i like too - happening with beyoncé right now for instance (though with less of the 6music old people on board)

ha xp the timberlake album is DEF part of this

what does presentism mean here?

using synths?

DP's present seems to involve them doing things they haven't done before (make a hit dance song without synths), as ever. discussion of their "relevance" doesn't seem usefu. it's their unique position and individuality in approach that makes their returns interesting.

xp Of course people are excited about the idea of a record. Anticipation is fun, especially when it's being stoked so expertly. You're right that the music is not the sole point, at least not until people hear the whole album, but the longing is interesting - a craving for an event album. Timberlake's exploits a similar craving but much less imaginatively and with a ton of superstar baggage.