Album Of The Day: Random Access Memories by Daft Punk

Album Art of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories album - On a black background, in the center is two halves of rounded, novelty helmets. On the left half there's a silver helmet with a slit where the mouth is, and a black glass area stretching across the middle from ear to ear, and the rest is a chrome dome. On the right, there's a gold-colored helmet with a much bigger, curved black glass dome across the whole front except for the chin area. Through neither of these can you see anything about the person inside. In the top left, written in white marker, is the album title in a handwritten cursive script.

"Let the music of your life / Give life back to music." Released 13 years ago yesterday, this is fourth and final studio album by disco/electronic duo Daft Punk. After the success of their Tron: Legacy soundtrack, they came back with this long album full of songs that spanned many genres and featured many collaborations with other artists. When you think of electronic music or maybe you've heard the popular singles from this album such as "Get Lucky" or "Lose Yourself To Dance", you might think it's mostly a pop record with electronic elements, and that's there, but it's more than that. Songs like "Within" and "The Game Of Love" are more slow-tempo rock with heavy keyboards and vocals sung through a vocoder. "Giorgio By Moroder" honors electronic music pioneer Giorgio Moroder with the longest track of the album; the first half slower and featuring audio of Moroder telling his personal life story to some music, and then it ends with an extended jam of synthesizer music. Like you might expect from electronic music, many of the tracks are 5 or 6 minutes long and are a fun vibe. The most popular songs have vocals from Pharrell Williams, and a few songs feature guitar from Nile Rodgers of Chic. And the song "Touch" has long musical interludes but features the vocals of Paul Williams, and his vocals almost sound like it might be from some Broadway musical or something. Throughout, Daft Punk keeps you guessing musically, melding disco, electronic, soft rock, funk and pop, and this album is a fun going-away party for the duo who announced Daft Punk was no longer recording or performing in 2021.

Release Year: 2013
Listen on Apple Music
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