![]() The fact that Animal Collective and Daft Punk would one day cross paths is also a remarkable curiosity for anyone who paid attention during the early days of MP3 swaps and file-sharing.īut the standout collaborator on Random Access Memories is, without a doubt, N.E.R.D. It’s intriguing to see the French duo relinquish so much control in the interest of venturing even further out past the buoys of a comfort zone. While most of RAM is an amalgamation of collaborative styles, like two white-hot stars sharing energy across each other’s distinct orbits, the gravity of Lennox’s hymnal, Brian Wilson-inspired croon hijacks the song and makes “Doin’ It Right” feel more like a Lennox solo output. “Doin’ It Right” is another dreamy partnership that plants Noah Lennox, a.k.a. It’s a confirmation of his own talents, as well as Daft Punk’s disciplined production and attention to detail. Here, Casablancas manages to come across as an artificial lifeform grasping toward human sentiments, rather than the other way around. Casablancas fires off in rapid succession “Now I thought about what I want to say / But I never really know where to go / So I chained myself to a friend / Cause I don’t know what else to do.” The most fascinating thing about the track is how it stands apart from the more traditional vocoding techniques of today. The Strokes frontman previously demonstrated an interest in dance music with his 2009 solo effort, Phrazes for the Young, and judging from this track, one can only hope he lingers around the genre. It’s not until Julian Casablancas’ inclusion on “Instant Crush” that the album centers back on course. It doesn’t help that it’s followed by the album’s weakest moment: the bloated dirge of a piano ballad, “Within”. Granted, it’s an honorable soliloquy from a Dance Music Hall of Fame inductee, but the spartanism of a spoken word segment – especially one that sounds like Werner Herzog waxing poetic over the Drive soundtrack - three tracks deep into the album is a roadblock and diminished return upon subsequent replays that could be better positioned at the very start or end of the record. “Giorgio by Moroder” is framed around iconic Italian producer, songwriter, and composer Giorgio Moroder, who shares an autobiographical monologue that starts in the ’60s and works its way to today. throwing down a jazzy fusion of guitar licks over an upbeat, funky processional that could serve as an album summary or even a warning: “Abandon hope of an EDM record all ye who enter here.” Opener “Give Life Back to Music” features a grinning Nile Rogers and Paul Jackson Jr. It’s a rolodex of celebrated artists, both contemporary and preceding, who have inspired Bangalter and Homem-Christo to make music that revisits ’70s discotheques and ’80s funkadelic boat parties. Instead, Daft Punk cuts ties with itself on RAM by exploring the past through some of the best and boldest collaborative efforts in recent memory. Yet it’s also marked by a playful whimsy that falls short of measuring up to the variety that pulsed through 2001’s Discovery, or the groundbreaking dance exploration found within their fabled 1997 debut, Homework. Within seconds, the record stands out as a more homogenized and sleek listening experience than its predecessor, 2005’s scattershot Human After All. All it took was razing the digital foundations that brought the group to fame in the first place. ![]() But with Random Access Memories, the robots have found their souls. What sort of film is this? Bangalter has shared that the group is “rawing a parallel between the brain and the hard drive – the random way that memories are stored.” This tale of robots yearning to live like men is a motif soldered throughout the group’s multimedia career. Random Access Memories has been echoing in the metallic domes of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for half a decade. The sheer number of collaborations on RAM, including noted movie composers Paul Williams and Giorgio Moroder, finds Daft Punk building upon their new-flesh narrative, adding to their storied, cinematic mythos of the diminishing boundary between computers and people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |