Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

2013 Grammy Award Winner for Album of the Year, Record of the Year "Get Lucky," Best Pop Duo/Group Performance "Get Lucky," Best Dance/Electronica Album & Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical!

Michael Fremer Rated 9/10 Music, 10/10 Sonics in his August 2013 reviews on www.analogplanet.com!

180 Gram Double Vinyl! Mastered by Bob Ludwig!
One of the Most Anticipated Albums of the Year! First Studio Album in 8 Years! Over 75 Minutes of Pure Analogue Adventure!

Featuring "Get Lucky" & "Lose Yourself To Dance"!

In their 20-year history, French electronic music duo Daft Punk have redefined electronic music, pioneered the live dance concert experience and shaped pop culture. Random Access Memories is Daft Punk’s first studio album in 8 years. Their awareness reached critical mass when they performed their hit “Stronger” on the Grammy Awards with Kanye West in 2008. They appeared in and scored Disney’s Tron: Legacy (2010) which sold 700,000 and catapulted them further into the mainstream. Daft Punk total U.S. sales to date is over 2 MILLION UNITS.

Random Access Memories is their fourth studio album and most ambitious and epic release to date comprising 13 tracks and over 75 minutes long. The album pays tribute to the late 1970s and early 1980s era of music in the United States, particularly the sounds that emerged from Los Angeles.

Unlike their previous studio albums, Daft Punk recruited session musicians to record live instrumentation in professional studio locations. The duo limited the use of electronic instruments to drum machines, a modular synthesizer, and vintage vocoders. The album features collaborations with Panda Bear, Julian Casablancas, Todd Edwards, DJ Falcon, Chilly Gonzales, Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, Paul Williams, and Pharrell Williams. Random Access Memories is the duo's most critically and commercially successful album to date, scoring 87/100 on Metacritic, and debuting at number one in 22 countries worldwide.

The album's title is said to encapsulate Daft Punk's interest in the past, referencing both random-access memory technology and the human experience. Bangalter explained the reasoning behind the name: "We were drawing a parallel between the brain and the hard drive – the random way that memories are stored." Daft Punk felt that while current technology allows for an unlimited capacity to store recorded material, the content produced by contemporary artists has diminished in quality. Their goal was therefore to maximize the potential of infinite storage by recording a sprawling amount of elements. The duo pointed to the process as being further inspiration for the album's title, as they sought to make connections out of the random series of ideas.

Regarding the style of the album, they sought a "west coast vibe", referencing such acts as Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers and the Eagles. Daft Punk also acknowledged that the record pays homage to Michael Jackson, The Cars and Steely Dan. The recording of live synthesizer parts was done in a progressive rock fashion, with the pop sensibilities of Wizzard and The Move. Daft Punk specifically looked to the album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd as models. Bangalter felt that, "The most important records in music, whether it's Led Zeppelin [...] or The White Album or Sgt. Pepper's... or Quadrophenia or Tommy, are the ones that take you on a journey for miles and miles."

"Indeed, 'memories' is the album's keyword: Daft Punk celebrate the late '70s and early '80s with lavish homages... More importantly, Random Access Memories taps into the wonder and excitement in that era's music. A particularly brilliant example is 'Touch,' where singer/songwriter Paul Williams conflates his work in Phantom of the Paradise and The Muppet Movie in the song's mystique, charm, and fragile yet unabashed emotions. Often, there's an almost gooey quality to the album; Daft Punk have never shied away from 'uncool' influences or sentimentality, and both are on full display here. At first, it's hard to know what to make of all the fromage, but Random Access Memories reveals itself as the kind of grand, album rock statement that listeners of the '70s and '80s would have spent weeks or months dissecting and absorbing -- the ambition of Steely Dan, Alan Parsons, and Pink Floyd are as vital to the album as any of the duo's collaborators... Daft Punk's most personal work, and richly rewarding for listeners willing to spend time with it." - Heather Phares, allmusic.com, Rated 4.5/5 Stars

"When Daft Punk score on 'R.A.M.,' like they do with both Pharrell Williams collaborations and on the killer Julian Casablancas track 'Instant Crush,' dance music fans can sit back and marvel at the results before finding their legs and reporting to the dance floor. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have made an analog album that's less of a 'throwback' and more of a salute to the idols that would now do anything to hop on the duo's full-length." - Jason Lipshutz, Billboard

"[T]here's the full package – a 70-minute­-plus, over-the-top concept LP of prog-rocking, reverse-engineered dance music orbiting somewhere between Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Earth, Wind and Fire's That's the Way of the World... Like ex-smokers turned anti-tobacco militants, Daft Punk have been disparaging EDM in the press, and without forsaking their Kiss-like robot personae, they've built a record more or less wholly on live instrumentation. Its brilliance is often irrefutable... [T]he absence of 'modern' club beats is striking. This is not a record for the average Electric Daisy Carnival goer. But maybe that's the point. A sort of Portrait of the Artists as Grown-Ass Ravers, this is Daft Punk conjuring the musical era that first inspired them, when disco conquered the world with handcrafted grooves and prog-rock excess magnified emotions in black-lit bedrooms." - Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, Rated 4/5 Stars

"[T]hey 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... Daft Punk, in other words, have an argument to make: that something special in music has been lost... If people still went into stereo shops and bought stereos regularly, like they did during the era Daft Punk draw from, this record, with its meticulously recorded analog sound, would be an album to test out a potential system, right up there with Steely Dan’s Aja and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Daft Punk make clear that one way to 'give life back to music' is through the power of high fidelity." - Mark Richardson, Pitchfork, Rated 8.8 Best New Music

"[T]he recording is spectacular!... The record is part disco, part progressive rock, part space rock, part funk, part dinner-theater, and part psychedelic... The more you listen to this record, the more it reveals the depth of its conceptual richness, even if it's expressed in disco beats. Even if you don't pay attention to that or to the lyrics (not that I would understand why you would do that), the rich quality of the cinematic production and recording will thrill the senses... The sound is analog-rich, warm, almost fat, with bass that's deep, muscular and lavish. The stage is wide and deep. The midrange is lush and the top end never offends with grit or harshness, yet is open and airy with cleanly rendered transients. You can just keep cranking this up and it only gets better!" - Michael Fremer, analogplanet.com, Music 9/10, Sound 10/10

Features:
• 180 Gram Vinyl
• Double LP
• Limited Time Download Card Included
• LP Size Booklet
• Gatefold Jacket
• Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering

Musicians:
Daft Punk, vocals, modular synthesizer, keyboards, guitar
Panda Bear, vocals
Julian Casablancas, vocals, lead guitar
Todd Edwards, vocals
DJ Falcon, modular synthesizer
Chilly Gonzalas, keyboards, piano
Giorgio Moroder, voice
Nile Rodgers, guitar
Paul Williams, vocals
Pharrell Williams, vocals

Selections:
LP1 - Side 1:
1. Give Life Back To Music
2. The Game Of Love
3. Giorgio By Moroder
LP1 - Side 2:
1. Within
2. Instant Crush (feat. Julian Casablancas)
3. Lose Yourself To Dance (feat. Pharrell Williams)
LP2 - Side 3:
1. Touch (feat. Paul Williams)
2. Get Lucky (feat. Paul Williams)
3. Beyond
LP2 - Side 4:
1. Motherboard
2. Fragments Of Time (feat. Todd Edwards)
3. Doin' It Right (feat. Panda Bear)
4. Contact