Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

"wish the "weird" parts were weirder and longer though"

yes, what this guy says!

i am super curious how much this PR blitz pays off in terms of sales. it's one thing if they're touring cause that's a lot of money to be made but if the bottom line is album sales I wonder what the trade off was in terms of marketing/publicity costs and the number of records sold.

i don't think they committed that much? a few SNL ads, screentime at coachella

seems really efficient actually

i wonder

yeah but the cost in helmet polish alone

marketing costs probably recouped in the itunes exclusive alone

yeah, they probably did a lot of in kind trade; daft punk name carries weight
just wondering who is gonna take a page from this book going forward
kanye already projecting his head on buildings; don't want to see where this arms race ends
http://www.chartattack.com/features/2012/09/13/9-bizarre-artist-merch-items-2/

itunes just delivered my pre-order. sounds a bit clearer than the 320 cd (?) rip.

apparently it's "mastered for itunes", which sounded ominous, but seems to just means the mastering engineer could preview how what they delivered to apple would end up sounding? http://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

℗ 2013 Daft Life Limited under exclusive license to Columbia Records, a Division of Sony Music Entertainment

All these interviews are making me think of them as Jay and Silent Bob

or penn and teller?

this album (AND the sequencing) is really growing on me.

every damn time I play "Within" I hear "Against All Odds (Take a Look At Me Now)."

Well that was humiliating...thought I'd physically buy an album on its day of release for the first time in an age and realised that there wasn't a wrecka store in about a 10 mile radius...so resorted to going to my local Sainsbury (Sainsbury!!!) to purchase it (I wonder if they do a 'value' version of it)...had a an illuminating conversation with the cashier about the sonic lushness of it and the new Kurt Vile album and then he told me there was a 'special' on all Asparagus...Yeezus wept...

lol, did you buy any asparagus?

Asparagus isn't really what it was in 1997, now it's like Disneyfied asparagus or something. No one who really likes vegetables would even bother with it now.

Has this been posted here yet? http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/blog/mark-e-smith-vs-daft-punk/

haha matt

for real tho, feel like samphire is the headz choice these days

yes xp. can someone start a serafinowicz thread to keep his stuff there? : (

Headed for a US #1.

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2013/05/random-access-moroder/

sfj: "I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard."

http://newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2013/05/27/130527crmu_music_frerejones

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18028-daft-punk-random-access-memories/

Am I the only one who's gone from thinking SFJ was a fantastic writer to not really caring what he says about anything anymore?

I generally don't either but he's mostly otm.

in that piece

So Random Access Memories got the exact same Pitchfork score as Kaputt did, which was also reviewed by Mark Richardson. Coincidence? Probably.

had a an illuminating conversation with the cashier about the sonic lushness of it and the new Kurt Vile album

― The Pastiche Liberation Front (sonnyboy), Monday, May 20, 2013 2:57 AM (4 hours ago)

lol, i bought a vinyl copy of the new KV yesterday and am currently listening to it for the first time*. my first thought was "this is at least as good a comparison point for random access memories as kaputt."

* an excellent album, btw, don't know why i put it off for so long

Haven't read the review, but Mark is an excellent writer. Not surprised that he reviewed it, because if anyone can make a strong case for a divisive album it's him. Wouldn't be surprised if the same though was behind the Destroyer review.

Like, if I saw whatever number grade the review got, and it was written by Ian Cohen, I wouldn't bother. But with Mark's name attached, I'm going to give it a read.

that is their highest rating for a Daft Punk studio album by a good margin

The score comes with the preceding cover-story as a package-deal.

In 2007, Kanye West’s single “Stronger” used a sample from the song, and helped nudge hip-hop toward the sounds of the club.

why the fuck do ppl say stupid shit like this

I increasingly don't understand SFJ's approach of describing bit by bit how a track proceeds. Ellen Willis was explaining pop to NYer readers over 40 years ago and she didn't feel obliged to do that. Just get to the big picture argument. It feels here that he's describing tracks in detail in lieu of getting off the fence and saying if he likes them or not. He makes some elegant points along the way but if I were a NYer reader who wasn't particularly pop-savvy I'd have no idea whether to check out the record.

Also smh that he singles out Giorgio By Moroder as a dud. I don't think I've ever recovered my respect for his taste since he said Let England Shake was PJ Harvey's worst album.

The score comes with the preceding cover-story as a package-deal.

― Evan, Monday, May 20, 2013 10:09 AM (12 minutes ago)

daft punk truth now!

xpost I don't think his piece is that hard to parce. I mean, I think Giorgio By Moroder is equally awesome and terrible, too. I can't imagine ever playing it all the way through again, but find plenty to like in it when it's on. I think it should have been a hidden bonus track, or an instrumental, but I wouldn't recommend people avoid it. Which is basically what he is getting at, too. I mean, he makes it explicit: "This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?" It's an intriguing thought. This album does what it sets out to do about as well as anyone could ever do it. Is that good enough? Dunno, but if I had no idea what this band was about and read this piece, I'd be inclined to check it out.

Agree that he should stick to the big picture stuff, though.

I suppose I find his point glib. It's not really a radical question.

And Giorgio By Moroder is my favourite track so I don't get how it's symptomatic of awesome/terrible. Fragments of Time or Touch maybe.

This makes it seem like I'm more down on SFJ than I am. I still enjoy reading him but I tend to leave his reviews feeling a little undernourished these days.

why the fuck do ppl say stupid shit like this

― AMERICA IS ABOUT RESSLING (DJP), Monday, May 20, 2013 11:14 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

i just think that "club" is being used too generically. obviously rap has been played in clubs since the beginning of its existence.

rock rock to the planet rock

UKers who pre-ordered the vinyl - has yours arrived yet? Mine hasn't :(

I don't think I've ever recovered my respect for his taste since he said Let England Shake was PJ Harvey's worst album.

I didn't know that, I stopped reading him when he begged people for money to buy a new hard drive.

lol

I googled that. Jesus. Hard times.

I didn't know that, I stopped reading him when he begged people for money to buy a new hard drive.

Oh shit, totally forgot about this. OK, not totally, but enough that I couldn't figure out why just seeing his byline made me giggle.

“Lose Yourself to Dance”, on the other hand, is OK, but plodding, perhaps the weakest song on the record and a good example of the potential pitfalls of Daft Punk’s backward-looking approach

GTFO P4K

"This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?" It's an intriguing thought.

haven't read the sfj piece yet but out of context: no

the boat OTM

Seriously, there's so many things wrong with that one sentence. Calling Daft Punk's approach "backward-looking" alone is a travesty. Using musical styles that have been long around does not equate to "backward-looking". If anything this is a very forward-thinking, futuristic record.

This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?

oh come on. he's too smart to coyly pretend there is any such thing ("good", i mean really). he's just saying that music can succeed on its own terms and still seem awful to him. which should be obvious enough to go without saying.