Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

it's from the author of "Evergreen," sonny.

this album is terrible, it's my favorite, it makes me nauseous, it plods, it's so original, I love it, it's not worth the wait, time for bed

The Akbar and Jeff critical school.

listening for the 7th time, i think. love everything except the pee bear track at this point.

So, from the reactions here I gather it's both the worst and best album ever, is that about right?

touch is so great

I am tempted to go to the Janelle Monae thread and see how many of the people over there complaining about her being an overly theatrical theater kid are into this album

okay wtf @ "Touch", this sounds like a rejected song from "Hair"

― far too much asshole flesh (DJP), Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:20 AM (1 minute ago)

i thought so too, at first. now i love it. the death of critical distance = a consummation devoutly to be wished

So, from the reactions here I gather it's both the worst and best album ever, is that about right?

― StanM, Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:23 AM (3 minutes ago)

yeah, that about covers it

vocoder freakout in "Get Lucky" is the second-best moment on the album behind the points in "Giorgio By Moroder" when the groove locks in between the solos

lampski i am really glad you like this!

i need to spend way more time with it before i can decide whether i like it as much as Kaputt-- i'm coming at it from a very different way than i came to Kaputt, but i do see the similarities in its fierce big and beautiful melancholy softness

also i just want to say again that CONTACT is so fucking killer

the opening to "Beyond" sounds a little like a pastiche of a symphonic version of the end level music in Super Mario Brothers

that's the sample from the Sherbs song.

I feel like every time they start to build momentum on this album, they pull back and decide to do something either incredibly safe and unsurprising or something incredibly self-indulgent that pulls me out of the groove the album is trying to set

sherbs sample is on "contact" iirc?

So, from the reactions here I gather it's both the worst and best album ever, is that about right?

― StanM, Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:23 AM (3 minutes ago)

i'm gonna be controversial here and go with "this album is fine"

Yes, Sherbs on "Contact," not "Beyond."

i'm gonna be controversial here and go with "this album is fine"

u rebel

The balance is a bit off. I could do with a little more Giorgio/Contact intensity and a little less robot-feels-sad-as-cocaine-wears-off vocoder crooning.

lol okay "Motherboard" is so far my favorite song on the album just by virtue of having the busiest, most interesting drums

yeah "Motherboard" is the only song I've liked without reservation so far

The balance is a bit off. I could do with a little more Giorgio/Contact intensity and a little less robot-feels-sad-as-cocaine-wears-off vocoder crooning.

― Deafening silence (DL), Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:36 AM (2 minutes ago)

no way, the melancholy fuckbot parts are awesome

In the spirit of "too much time on ilx" I keep expecting Frank Gambale to turn up and give a monologue about pinball machines

Contact sucks imo, worst track on it. They should never make techno again.

whoopz. thought DJP said "Contact."

"Motherboard" is fantastic

"Fragments of Time"

okay this is the first song where I can agree with the Steely Dan comparisons

it's okay

I am tempted to go to the Janelle Monae thread and see how many of the people over there complaining about her being an overly theatrical theater kid are into this album

― far too much asshole flesh (DJP), Tuesday, May 14, 2013 3:23 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It would be misleading to conflate all the different potential meanings of "theatrical" though. DP don't do spirit fingers. Not least because they don't really have fingers.

The theatricality of "Touch" fits in with the narrative theatricality running through The Archandroid; I agree it's overstatement to compare the entire Daft Punk album to it.

they have beautiful fingers!

There's no spirit fingers in "Touch"?

If you want to see how people react to really bad theatricality in this sort of thing, check the Aeroplane thread.

i really love when the horns come in on touch and wish there was a whole song of that

There's also a lot more stylistic variation on The Archandroid with a lot of different moods on display, whereas this album basically alternates between "I'm in a lounge" and "I'm weeping in the mirror"

"Motherboard" is fantastic

otm.

You haven't gotten to Contact yet.

haha oh boy, I'm on the Panda Bear track

there are shades of "what if we made 'My Girls' slower and more tasteful" going on here performancewise

I'm finding it semi-compelling though in a way most of the rest of the album isn't

i thought the panda bear was fine. there's too much need to have a big garish opinion about his not as garish as usual guest spot.

The theatricality of Janelle is for better or worse tied up in self-presentation, the ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME undercurrent of the theatre-kid's theatricality.

I don't think it's possible to pinpoint a coherent personable identity behind the sound of the album (or even just "Touch") in order to facilitate the comparison, even if arguably the album is less varied stylistically as you say.

I'd sooner compare Basement Jaxx to Janelle.

this album basically alternates between "I'm in a lounge" and "I'm weeping in the mirror"

sold

It's their tribute to post-sellout Herbie Hancock. I dig it.

But there will never be another Discovery.

Does there have to be?

this album basically alternates between "I'm in a lounge" and "I'm snorting things off a mirror"

weeping cocaine iirc

alvin lucier b-sides xpost

watching the end of a party through mirrors

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/5076/63720082vy5.jpg

this is all far better than the 1000 uses of "weeping robots" or "robots having sex" that i've read in ref to ram in the last few weeks

Looking at yourself in the mirror after snorting things off a mirror and feeling sad.