My digital love for Daft Punk goes analog

My top 5 most listened to artists since 2006

With the release of Random Access Memories, I knew I was going to write something about it after giving it a few good listens. The more I thought about it though, the more I started thinking back to how I first became a fan of them. After all, this phenomenal rise to stardom almost exclusively through the legend of their live performances, maybe a bit of Kanye and Disney is pretty fascinating. They've taken an easy stranglehold of #1 on the Billboard charts after never coming closer than 61 previously.
On top of that, their marketing plan for RAM's release was incredible and I'm sure only helped build up the hype to the album's release.

I remember the first song I heard by them, like many others, was "One More Time" off Discovery back in early 2001. Funny enough, I listened to it fully for the first time on a ninth grade school trip to France and loved it instantly. I enjoyed the catchy beat of the overall song but THAT bridge with the emphasis of Romanthony's vocals, the light synthesizer background and the slow build-up was what grabbed me.  On that trip, I would often see billboards in the Subway everywhere advertising the release of Discovery, for a band I really knew little about. I later ended up watching the entire Interstella 5555 music video series for that album and thinking "Harder Better Faster Stronger" was my favourite.

For some reason, that album just stuck with me through the years. I can only think of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head and Parachutes and many of U2's songs that did the same as I went through high school and touring through different musical tastes. Those three artists never left me.

I think I never really heard much of Human After All because at that time of my life I wasn't looking much into the electronic or dance music at all. I still liked Discovery but wasn't on top of what was coming out. If I remember correctly, it was bands like Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes and bands you'd find on the Garden State soundtrack that occupied my time.

Then Alive 2007 came out. I was obsessed with that album for a long time. Same with TRON. Those three albums had so much contrast between them but the beat, the way the music flowed, and the progressive layering were all aspects of them I appreciated about Daft Punk.

I bought into the hype of their fabled next appearance/performance/studio album, I didn't care what it was. After Alive, I wanted to see them live and I was ready to travel to see it happen. I remember the first news I heard about their next album was that Nile Rodgers had publicly stated he was in collaboration with them. I even found my tweet!

And now we wait... | Nile Rogers says he is working with Daft Punk on their new album houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-… via @culturemap
— josh spaceman (@jfanae) February 7, 2012

It was a combination I would not have thought of, but it had me salivating. My parents' musical taste resulted in me being raised essentially on the Beatles and disco and I couldn't believe that the guy responsible for these riffs that I distinctly remember was going to be on the album.

Fast forward to today and I have Random Access Memories in my collection and I've listened to it all the way through at least a dozen times. At first listen, like many people I talk to, don't really know what to make of it since it is such a departure from what we're used to with music these days, and I'm not even talking about the disco revival. With time though, I grew to love it, and each week it seems a different song is what I have on repeat.

I will take a few block quotes from Pitchfork's review of the album. This is a big deal for me because I ALMOST ALWAYS find their reviews condescending, egotistical and inconsistent, but that's a story for another day. There are some instances where I also don't agree with what they say in the review but some large quotes took the words right out of my mouth, so kudos:

"It’s all rendered with an amazing level of detail, with no expense spared. For RAM, Daft Punk recorded in the best studios, they used the best musicians, they added choirs and orchestras when they felt like it, and they almost completely avoided samples, which had been central to most of their biggest songs. Most of all, they wanted to create an album-album, a series of songs that could take the listener on a trip, the way LPs were supposedly experienced in another time."

Yup. The time they took to meticulously craft it is unheard of these days. First, it's an analog album. They also employed people to play the drum beat or guitar rhythm for the entire length of songs rather than loop a small section for consistency's sake. Their attention to detail was in every aspect of RAM.

"The continual churn of the internet, experience tells us, favors quick connections, conveniences, ephemeral pleasures. But there are areas of culture popping up that seek to slow down, focus on details, and wallow in the kinds of media that it still takes money to create. This is the space that Daft Punk seek to occupy, which in and of itself can be seen as problematic. For those who embrace the more egalitarian approach to music production created by access to cheap tools and cheap distribution, Daft Punk’s mind-bogglingly lush record scans as elitist, possibly even dismissive of the creativity that is happening on a smaller scale."

Well put! With such a contrasting message they are trying to relay from current convention, they risk alienating some, especially in the EDM crowd.

So RAM is best appreciated as a counter to these trends. It’s not that “all music should be this” but that “some music could be this.” By the time you make it to the album’s astonishing final stretch, it’s hard not to think that Daft Punk have succeeded at what they set out to do. The arrangements on "Beyond" and “Motherboard” are breathtaking, and Panda Bear, after many so-so collaborations, aces his vocal turn on “Doin’ It Right”, a terrifically uplifting bit of electro-pop.

"And then it ends with 'Contact': It’s the most old-school Daft Punk song here, and it’s also the only one based on a sample, pulling its main riff from a 1981 song by the Australian band the Sherbs. Daft Punk and collaborator DJ Falcon first used 'Contact' in a DJ mix in 2002, and now it finds its way on an album about time and memory in 2013. You get a feeling of time collapsing with it, seeing where Daft Punk have been and where they could go. 'Contact' will likely close some future live multimedia extravaganza, and people will go insane, and they will return to this album with new ears."

My thoughts exactly... I don't know how you don't put "Contact" anywhere else BUT the finale.

Thinking about the album, I don't know if there are going to be any songs that stick with me as much as "One More Time" but this album is more than the some of its parts, and I can't remember the last time I've felt that way about an LP before. I give it a 4.5/5 myself because I still don't quite get "Touch", haha.

Pitchfork may have been speaking in superlatives about this album being a landmark in musical history, but I don't think they're completely off-base, especially with news coming down the pipeline that now David Guetta wants to play copycat and have a chance with Mr. Rodgers. I guess time will tell, but I do know that in my books, the Daft Punk collection will continue to grow and won't be collecting much dust along the way.