Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

realized what else fragments of time reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVti5vHnP8

^^ it's awesome. Have you heard Benny Sings' album ART?

yes, its good, but the rest isnt as good as that

That's true, but dang gr8080, have you heard Coco Tour? His new project w/ Dutch singer/rapper Faberyayo. I might be wrong, but I think you will love this! They have two awesome singles out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YjJxwzP8pQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAL4Ae5vDk0

<3

i started in on the dan when i was 17 or 18, pretzel logic, then countdown, then royal scam. every new album was so fresh, too, since they were all so different.

I was the first guy playing Steely Dan to the EDM kids.

practically the only thought this album provoked in me was "why do the drums sound so terrible?"

i agree, the drum sound is boring. can't believe people like the drums on Contact. too much open hi-hat, it sounds like one of those jam-tronica bands.

it's funny, i'm coming from the perspective of revering chopsy drummers as a kid and taking years to see beauty of four-on-the-floor drum machine beats, and they're just coming from the completely opposite place.

Then I played 'Home At Last,' which I copped all the shit for 'Rosanna' from. Once again, no one knew the drummer. I said, 'Guys, it's Bernard Purdie. Who in this room has heard of Steve Gadd?' All the hands went up. 'Aja?' All hands up. 'I'm sure you all know Steve won Performance Of The Year for that in Modern Drummer. Well. you're all fucked up! I just played you 'Home At Last' with Bernard Purdie, and that's on the same record. What do you do, listen to 'Aja' and then take the needle off? As musicians you should know everything I just played for you. Some of the best drum shit ever is on that record. Each track has subtleties."

Porcaro, "That's at a point when drum machine technology was just rearing its ugly head. There was a lot of talk about the future of quantizing and sequencing in real time. To a perfectionist, that was all really cool stuff. The title track was done to a Urei click. In fact it was all Urei except 'Hey Nineteen,' which is WENDEL.

BS: Tell us about Wendel, the drum machine you designed.
RN: We found that there were certain feels that we couldn't get out of real drummers -- they weren't steady enough. So we had to design something that would do it perfectly, but with some human feeling, the right amount of layback. Instead of just one high-hat sound that repeats machine-like over and over, we had sixteen different ones, so it had the inflections. Wendel can play exactly what the drummer plays -- if he plays a little early or a little hard, Wendel plays it a little early or a little hard. Play it once, Wendel memorizes the song, then you play it again and it repeats what it hears.

http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/roger-nichols-gear/images/product-wendel.png

Wendel After All

Apple’s lax iTunes streaming security gives out a free copy of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories

BTW, one thing I sort of love about "Giorgio By Moroder" is how it just blows the idea of "Teachers" up to outrageous proportions.

One thing I sort of love about "Giorgio by Moroder" is how they take this guy know for his behind the spotlight production/programming prowess and have him talk over the music.

yes moroder, behind the spotlight, sure

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mecm5v3SK41qza6yso1_1280.jpg

Sweetzer Ave

what i like is they took nile rodgers, this guy known for producing duran duran, and had him play guitar on it. and disco guitar at that!

?

really the only unsurprising moment on the album was when they had todd edwards sing like michael mcdonald, like THIS AGAIN?

i just ran out for a short bit and heard part of "get lucky" on my pop station

a little surprising i guess

I'm just disappointed they didn't take a cue from Giorgio and have their last track consist of them listing the album's credits through a vocoder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kw-X1dNuzI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G4at_OQenQ

you have to hand it to these guys for a fucking masterful marketing job on this. when you thought they'd ZIG, they ZAGGED. i honestly can't remember any build-up even approaching the fever-pitch intensity for this. i know what lex means about a similar feel between this and the JT album - sort of variations on hey, what up, it's the return of the mack except in more expensive suits this time - but the JT build-up paled next to this.

Hats off to these guys, because the JT basically sounds like you'd expect it to sound, but not as good, while this, no matter where you stand on the results, is the last thing anyone expected from Daft Punk, even with all the hints and clues.

sort of sick of seeing music acts being praised for their marketing skillz and business acumen. it's sort of irrelevant.

don't you have some american idol to watch or something

not to them

xp

i mean, i totally agree with lex about being sick of it, but it's also pretty much the whole game these days, right?

Is the "music act" really praised for it though? I mostly see people in awe of the PR-campaign, but it's not heavily attributed to the band iirc

lol @ iatee trying to be a snob

it's also pretty much the whole game these days, right?

well yeah if you're interested in, like, business and the music industry or whatever

is the last thing anyone expected from Daft Punk

i kinda disagree.. iirc the electroma soundtrack had a similar feel and also, digital love sounds like super cheezeball disco pop with a breakdown that sounds like supertramp

I don't think anyone expected 'touch'

once you commit to paul williams, youre getting on the boat tbf

I thought this sounded exactly like daft punk when I first listened. maybe I need to listen again.

Peter Paphides feels the need to defend RAM against the masses:

http://hiddentracks.org/its-not-actually-a-disco-album-per-se-daft-punk-notes-from-a-small-backlash-2013/

His gripes seem kind of irrelevant if this album is truly going to hit the massive volumes that have been hinted at by Amazon, et al.

marketing has always been a part of pop music

there were certainly some unexpected touches but this is basically what I expected after hearing "Get Lucky"

Afaik most if not all of the marketing ideas came from Daft Punk themselves - definitely SNL, Coachella, the artwork and the Collaborators videos.

Lex, when you've made an album that's taken five years and a ton of cash I would argue that marketing is far from irrelevant. Praise where it's due as far as I'm concerned. It's not like the artists you rate are just chucking stuff out unpromoted and hoping somebody hears it.

xp Could have been interesting if Monday had seen a Vinyl release instead of the iTunes stream though.

I still kinda agree with the dollar bin thing though. could be the Monster of 2013.

I like this bit in Pete P's blog:

7. Dear People Who Seem Convinced That It’s All Been Done Before. Listen to Get Lucky. Then go back to your record collection and try and find a song that really sounds like it. I tried it the other week. I pulled out all of my Chic records. I pulled out Diana Ross’s Upside Down. I pulled out Sheila B. Devotion. None of them scratched the itch that Get Lucky scratched. The deep, foetal bass of Get Lucky couldn’t have been laid down in a pre-techno era. The gradual mutation of the vocal melody into robot-ecstasy – I haven’t heard that on any other record of the era… I’ve got LOADS of old records. I spent ALL OF THE 80s buying up cheap disco 12-inches. I don’t have ANYTHING that truly sounds like this.

I think he's right about the problem with streaming as well. Given that the original plan was to debut it at Wee Waa, I suspect that this was the only decision that wasn't part of DP's original plan.

People sniffing that Record X sounds exactly like Old Record Y, ignoring all the ways in which it doesn't, are the biggest bores in music.

It's not like the artists you rate are just chucking stuff out unpromoted and hoping somebody hears it.

I was going to say. But I mean, we ALL know this if we work in the business to some degree. Lex's interview with Taylor was just another to-do item on someone's business plan somewhere, same as mine was with Trent Reznor.

That part is spot on, "Fragments" is really the only tune that sounds really retro, acting like this could be a lost 70's disco album is absurd.

"it should be all about the music maaaaan" - the lex

group famous for sampling 70's music making new music that sounds like.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...shockah.

I don't care who they bite with their strong gallic teeth I just wish I loved this more still for some reason. i'll give it another shot though. maybe i'll even buy the cd when they have it across the street.

xp Everyone has a marketing plan of some kind. Daft Punk are just getting props because they worked out one that's clever and fun enough to cut through all the white noise. I think that's relevant, though of course it shouldn't have any bearing on what you perceive the quality of the music to be. Sometimes Lex sounds like an indie purist from 1985, which is weird if you're a big fan of Taylor Swift and Beyonce rather than the Wedding Present and the Field Mice.

Meanwhile down in Wee Wa

http://pitchfork.com/news/50786-watch-daft-punks-random-access-memories-launch-party-in-wee-waa-australia/