Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

come on now you can't fp a poster who took an associates song as their screen name

Thanks!

Geir once described the Associates as being ruined by Billy's screechy vocals (or something along those lines) Oh Geir..

Hasn't he been off this whole time building a Norwegian version of ILX or something?

i love giorgio's monologue but my brother hates it. quote: "how is this pleasant, catchy music abandoning any idea of 'harmony' or how music is supposed to be???"

― Treeship, Monday, June 24, 2013 8:37 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

your bro is geir hongro?

― The Reverend, Monday, June 24, 2013 8:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that doesn't sound like a geir viewpoint, and anyway his bro is otm

naw, that's dummy shit

i googled Geir Hongro and stumbled across a rateyormusic thread where he was being discussed disparagingly, but in a more mean spirited way than i've seen on ilx. i wonder why he hangs out over there. the level of discourse seemed.... low.

This is what he wrote on his RYM homepage.

My musical taste will always be all about genre. If it has certain stylistic elements, I will love it. If it has certain stylistic elements I prefer music not to have, I will hate it. Simple as that. So anything that has interesting (but catchy) melodies and harmonies that go just slightly beyond the typical harmonic structures, I will love, particularly if it also has a polished production, perfect playing and beautiful vocal harmonies mixed all the way in stereo. Plus as few rough edges as possible.

On the other hand, music that is noisy, has little or no sense of melody or harmony, screaming or growling vocals or any other kind of exaggerated express of emotion (anger or depression in particular) I will probably hate. This goes for virtually all hip-hop and most of today's metal, for instance. Plus the majority of acclaimed "classical" music from around 1920 or later.

Otherwise, my lists tell more about my musical taste than the ratings do. But to make the best impression, read the year lists from the top and don't care too much about the albums near the bottom. An album that makes #92 in my year list is usually not an album that I consider to be particularly good, at least not unless it was an unusually good year for music like the first half of the 80s tended to be.

very clinical taste. such objective criteria.

Poor Geir, it's time for him to come home.

pouring one out for geir and also markers, who is "taking a break" iirc. pouring two out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY

for at least a year i thought Geir Hongro was Gear!'s pseudonym

not to say that i assumed the latter could wield such arrogant challops

I love the giorgio track, both the music and the spoken words.
after so many times, it still cracks me up and gives me joy : the moment when the synth kicks in after "everybody calls me giorgio", the lounge-party break down, the scratching/snare hits crescendo...

Now that we're 6,000 posts in or whatever, I guess it's ok for the dilettantes to weigh in. I'm a casual DP fan (i.e. I only have Discovery and the 2007 live album) and I grabbed this off emusic mostly because I like "Get Lucky." I listened to the album the first time on a warm morning while I was mowing my lawn. It was close-to-perfect lawnmowing music. I am looking forward to playing it on our annual pontoon-boat outing later this summer. (Pontoon rock!) My 8-yr-old son likes the album and put "Game of Love" on his most recent mix CD. Which is to say, I think this is a very pleasant record and I think "Get Lucky" will still be around in 20 years.

Neil Tennant:

Q:What did you think of the Daft Punk album?

A: It’s very ambitious. This has been the year of two amazing marketing campaigns: David Bowie’s, and Daft Punk’s. They both revolve around neither artist having made a record for a while and creating a lot of anticipation.

Q: He says, releasing his second album in the space of a year.

A: Exactly! (Laughs) The total opposite of what we’ve done. But they’ve also been about selling an idea. If you compare it with us, we go to Los Angeles, we make an album, we use the people who sang on Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and all the rest of it, but we don’t make a big deal of that. We mention it in passing – we don’t say ‘we’re making a classic Los Angeles album and we’re drawing upon the history of Los Angeles to do that’. We don’t like to do anything that’s retro. We like to think, in our own way, that we’re moving on. Although with Daft Punk it’s exciting to think they’ve worked with Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers. It’s a soft rock album really, isn’t it?

Q: It’s interesting that people have said ‘oh here come Daft Punk showing the EDM lot how to make dance music’, because it’s not really a dance album. It would have been great if they’d stormed back with a smart electronic album to show the world that yes, you can actually make bright and brilliant dance music… This feels a bit like backing away from the fight. I mean if you walk away from a fight you win in a way, but not as much as you win by knocking someone out.

A: I mean on Nile Rodgers’ tracks he’s really earning his share – the first track is really just Chic, isn’t it. Have you read the Nile Rodgers book? It’s very good. He defines a pop song: the verse is only an excuse for the chorus, and the chorus is only an excuse for the breakdown. I said to Chris, ‘we should paint that on the wall of the studio’. It’s totally true. What I like on the Daft Punk album are the ballads: track two, for instance. They sound like Art Garfunkel is about to come on and sing. It feels like a very interesting and luxuriously created and expensive record and the idea is presented that this isn’t the sort of thing people do nowadays, although if you go to Los Angeles or Nashville you’ll find people doing that seven days a week. But they don’t have a computerised vocal on it.

"the verse is only an excuse for the chorus, and the chorus is only an excuse for the breakdown"
Love this !

neil sounds peevish abt the success of other people's marketing. market better. and yeah, nile otm. about the verse anyway...

"get lucky", "give life back to music" and "instant crush" and "lose yourself to dance" still sound great on a sunny day with the windows down. the rest have dropped out of regular rotation.

at this point, i'm somewhat torn about this one. i like it and had a very good time getting acquainted, but i'm not sure i can call it a "great pop record". though the production is seductive and the hooks appealing, the emotional interior seems rather sparsely populated. it just doesn't have much tangible personality. that's clearly the point, both of random access memories and of daft punk in general, but RAM's pop ambitions seem somewhat at odds with this. suspect that the mechanical insubstantiality will rob it of staying power. suppose i'll be better able to say by the end of the year.

would like to hear the Pet Shop Boys version of "Give Life Back To Music"

otm

yeah I'm going to have to revisit this album in a few months but right now it hits the same spot as their other good stuff, which is to say, good technique, poor construction

spoiler alert ...Crowded House do very well.

I love Crowded House, even a stopped clock, etc.

It feels like a very interesting and luxuriously created and expensive record and the idea is presented that this isn’t the sort of thing people do nowadays, although if you go to Los Angeles or Nashville you’ll find people doing that seven days a week.

Neil Tennant OTM.

i disagree with contenderizer. i think there is an emotional core to the album that is rooted in its loving, sort of curatorial orienation towards the sounds it works with. it is nostalgic, even elegaic, like 69 Love Songs which is another album that has been accused of being heartless.

This album, nostalgic? What would give anyone that idea?

I wonder if the dudes asked Art Garfunkel to sing and he just said no, thanks, I got, uh, shit to do.

from what i heard, they wanted him to wear a helmet and he refused, citing the weight of the helmets and his history of back problems.

I bet they asked a ton of people first, which is why they ended up with dude from Strokes and Panda Bear and Paul Williams.

pretty sure the panda bear didn't need to be begged.

I always assumed that they got the guy from Strokes because they were both using the same studio around that time.

i think his vocals work really well for that song. better than garfunkel's would have.

i think there is an emotional core to the album that is rooted in its loving, sort of curatorial orienation towards the sounds it works with. it is nostalgic, even elegaic, like 69 Love Songs which is another album that has been accused of being heartless.

― Treeship, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 8:51 AM (12 minutes ago)

yeah, i wouldn't call it unemotional, but rather a bit thin or one-dimensional in that regard. 69 love songs strikes me as relatively rich in emotion and personality, even (perhaps especially) when it's most obviously framed by genre and formal songcraft. merritt somewhat reminds me of guy maddin in that regard.

i sense a similar affection to the source material, which is moving to me because it makes me think that behind the daft punk masks are these two guys who like to play certain seminal disco and soft rock records over and over and over, relishing the details. 69 LS is one of my favorite albums for similar reasons: i picture merritt as a kind of lonely, disagreeable dude with a tough outer shell, who is really, really attached to artworks that other people might see as formulaic and trivial, and very defensive about this attachment, and this image is moving and relatable to me.

The heart is in the groove.

and the stillness is the move, as we know.

holy shit this thread has 6000 posts wtf is wrong with you people

You try to condense a conversation that moves from "Are daft punk popular?" to "are fans of Homework too old to be relevant?" to "this album is the greatest thing ever" to "this album is god awful" to "this album has some good parts and some bad parts" in only 5000

someone should attempt to read the whole thing and then liveblog their reading experience.

for me to poop on

just read the OP. man i love ned.

Well, one tries.

i think its an incredibly empathic record in a way that many big pop records dont tend to be anymore. its got a certain 'kindness' or lovingness about it which is what makes it more retro (in a pretty great way for me). but yeah, i think the compassion might be undone for a lot of people though in that it might seem a bit too soft or naive or just silly with the vocoders everywhere. but that neil tennant interviewer is totally right about this being an album that backs away from the edm race, but you knew that anyway from the first piece rolling stone did on the album...

I'm at the Red Sox game and the organist is jamming out to Get Lucky with the Casio beat in the bgd.

The 10 minute Get Lucky remix is on Spotify now.

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

doesn't start well imo but the outro is nice

a get lucky remix with more robots is all i ever wanted, yesss

theyve done a disco-style extended remix. ha.

(after listening) they should have gotten todd edwards to do it.

real missed opportunity this. there's a killer extended remix in that track but this isn't it. it's really meandering and most of the choices are boring/bad ones until the outro.

this is dope