Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

Based on one listen, at work, to a 128kbps stream, on office headphones, not turned up so that I can still respond to people, this was kinda disappointing!

Some great arpeggios though.

Pretty sure only Daft Punk would have both the will and the budget to put this record out there 2013. Most acts just wouldn't be able to make this even if they wanted to.

is there a thread about judging music before it's had a chance to sink in? not having a go at anyone here, but it's a thing that's happening with this record and i want to talk about it in broader terms. if there's no thread i'll do one.

god i wrote a thread but it was trite so i killed it

anyway, good loungy album that's doing little for me right now, but like arse am i judging it this quickly

Shocked that lex and the late great don't like this. They were coming to it with such warm hearts and open minds.

I'm not gonna judge compositional or emotional quality / impact / longevity yet, but three tracks in this SOUNDS amazing, phenomenologically. Absolutely sonically beautiful.

I think this Will Hermes line is OTM:

At times, the album is a victim of its own ambition. But it wouldn't be half as awesome a ride if it had aimed any lower.

I'd be surprised if anyone liked all of it but equally surprised if anyone (who wasn't trying to prove a point) liked none of it.

I already like it way more than Human After All.

Well yeah, obviously.

The drumming on Contact and the big drop in Giorgio are the two moments of irrefutable fuiud wonder for me.

irrefuiudable

Synths + live drumming = one of my favourite combinations.

yeah that hermes quote is otm. it goes big and not everything works but it's bold and weird and some of it is great. need a few more listens though, sadly don't have itunes access at work.

Finally hearing it for the first time...holy shit @ 'Give Life Back to Music' - perfection.

Touch is maybe not what I want from this, particularly.

actually this is rad but just a Whitest Boy Alive song lol

well, the second half of Giorgio by Moroder is horrible/embarrassing

Like I said, fuiud

liking this. loving it in some parts, but it's a little off, slightly misses the mark

it's Daft Punk's 'Tusk'

is pharrell shouting 'slut! slut! slut' in the verse of Lose Yourself to Dance?

man i find the myopia from people who think they should have just churned out homework over and over again really flaring up. this record isn't as good as homework or discovery, on first impressions, but i really question the sort of casual purism that sees people acting like homework was some hardcore touchstone of techno authenticity.

is pharrell shouting 'slut! slut! slut' in the verse of Lose Yourself to Dance?

I'm seeing some incredibly stupid opinions on Twitter, "stuck in the 90s" being the stupidest.

as a result of this thread i'm about to listen to George Benson for the first time!

I'm seeing some incredibly stupid opinions on Twitter, "stuck in the 90s" being the stupidest.

what did they expect from something called 'random access memories'

Re. ambitions of this record, I think it says something about the current scene that they have had to venture into oddball territory to make a record that is legitimately off the beaten path. Not every track does this -- mostly Touch and Giorgio, with a hint of it in Motherboard for continuity with their previous music. But it makes you wonder how influential this record can possibly be at the end of the day.

as a result of this thread i'm about to listen to George Benson for the first time!

you dont know this classic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ysfBys4cg

irrefuiudable

― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Tuesday, 14 May 2013 10:37 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

this is a keeper

thanks Suare. no i've a total blind spot with this guy, only thing i knew was '20/20'.

very very much enjoyed listening to this at a err, dinner party for my birthday yesterday.

so everybody else i was with hated it; sweet of them to try to like it, but no, i could tell they hated it.

well i liked it.

love hearing the tails on the end of the vocoder parts, fading out all crusty like, so warm and beautiful. some of the those parts make it feel a bit like the robert glasper experiment when they do their slow vocoder jams.

laughed out loud lots of times. hearing yacht rock, hall and oats, jacno, boogie, krautrock, kosmiche, studio funk, prince one of the songs also went into bizarro jim o'rourke eureka territory iirc

lol panda bear sounds like an x-factor boyband 1st audition

i absolutely love how offensive people are finding this. whoever mentioned alan parsons project, otm! this is one of the uncoolest records i've heard in a long time.

Jacno, really? where is that?

dunno something made me think jacno in it's childish cheesy melody live drums synth pop songwritery way

like soft rock with synths floating around in the background, less retangle more cercle-esque jacno. or if you took the vocals off je viens d'ailleurs and put a guest vocalist on top that'd totally fit on this record

that is a neat observation. I've never heard anyone reference Jacno for any reason but it does seem like he'd fit with a record like this.

fwiw i quite like it on first listen #thekbpverdict

man i find the myopia from people who think they should have just churned out homework over and over again really flaring up. this record isn't as good as homework or discovery, on first impressions, but i really question the sort of casual purism that sees people acting like homework was some hardcore touchstone of techno authenticity

Outside the big singles and a couple of other tracks, I don't even rate Homework that highly any more, its sound palette grated hugely the last time I listened to it. If I want to go back to that whole sound I get so much more out of records like Pansoul and Super Discount or the first Cryadmoure comp than I do out of Homework these days.

IMO a lot of Homework is waiting for that 3rd or 4th element to come over the top and tie everything together that never comes

this is one of the uncoolest records i've heard in a long time

yeah it's quite funny that the coolest album of the year™ is in many ways profoundly uncool. and it makes it even odder that a lot of the negative discourse that i've seen on twitter (i'm not gonna say all, i am happy to accept it's alright to dislike this album) surrounds its failure to work within a 90s and onwards dance framework. its sound is so clearly rooted in the uncool/hipstercool late 70s and early 80s that to expect it to function as something radically different from that seems strange.

According to the 2013 Wee Waa Show Guide (http://www.thecourier.net.au/media/downloads/Wee_Waa_Show_Guide_2013.pdf), the album launch has got prime position on Friday night in between the fireworks and the Cross Cut Saw contest.

it's quite funny that the coolest album of the year™ is in many ways profoundly uncool

http://best-b2b.com/userimg/529/537-1/mesh-cap-953.jpg

i don't really get how '70s/'80s yacht rock/soft rock is seen as uncool? beardo disco has been a thing for ages now, steely dan may be divisive generally but they're a touchstone to the point of cliché on ilm that you can't say they're seen as uncool, that whole decadent white-suited on-a-boat aesthetic is seen as uncool by NO ONE. obviously it's a departure for daft punk - insofar as that means much after the amount of time they took off - but i'm not hearing much on this album that's so unlike what anyone else has been doing recently.

lex otm

not very keen on it after one listen. That panda bear track ffs.

like, late 70s and early 80s? giorgio WHO?? they done flipped the script!!!!!!

i don't really get how '70s/'80s yacht rock/soft rock is seen as uncool? beardo disco has been a thing for ages now, steely dan may be divisive generally but they're a touchstone to the point of cliché on ilm that you can't say they're seen as uncool, that whole decadent white-suited on-a-boat aesthetic is seen as uncool by NO ONE

This album is pitching to and will be heard by a MUCH bigger and wider audience than the rest of that stuff though, in the wider world that aesthetic is still seen as pretty naff.

i don't really get how '70s/'80s yacht rock/soft rock is seen as uncool? beardo disco has been a thing for ages now, steely dan may be divisive generally but they're a touchstone to the point of cliché on ilm that you can't say they're seen as uncool, that whole decadent white-suited on-a-boat aesthetic is seen as uncool by NO ONE. obviously it's a departure for daft punk - insofar as that means much after the amount of time they took off - but i'm not hearing much on this album that's so unlike what anyone else has been doing recently.

I like the sentiment, but tell me where you've heard something like Touch before -- or Giorgio.

I'm not speaking to their quality -- but I do think these tracks are bizarre little creatures.

this album would be much better with the lack of panda bear but that would be the case with any album

in the wider world that aesthetic is still seen as pretty naff

giorgio moroder? nile rodgers? nahhhhh

it's nothing like "beardo disco" and yacht rock is a vague construct. the references are all filtered through daft punk's own sound. the paul williams track is kinda the height of uncool i'd say - judging by the "it sounds like a disney tune, omg i am cool rock guy i can't like this" bullshit that i'm reading all morning.

xpost the nile stuff is the only shiny acceptable pop - naff is part of moroder's appeal.

like almost every reference point on this album is pretty established & canonical. i really don't get why people are SURPRISED it sounds like this - i guess it's a surprise that not much is uptempo but in terms of the sounds they're using this is what the pre-release talk and "get lucky" led me to expect. i could be down with it if it wasn't executed in such a dry way - as it is i probably prefer it to discovery

the last time moroder got widespread mainstream press was when donna summer died (RIP) and the tone was reverential across the board

yeah that's what i meant, matt - what's been 'cool' on ilm and on the london etc club scene for a few years and on pitchfork for a bit less is still locked within what the more wider audience that are also anticipating this album (and buying millions of copies of get lucky, chic-ian disco at least having been more rehabilitated than the rest of those sounds) considers uncool.