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After nearly two decades spent predicting the future in the form of post-Kraftwerkian robotics and electronics, Daft Punk accept being infected by the time machine virus and catapult themselves with their bionic armor directly into the past. The quirky Frenchmen know they are in the joyful company of a gigantic throng of pop stars and the like, determined to abandon the gloom and void of the present. But unlike the latter, the Punk do not disembark at the marvelous and colorful service station of the Eighties, preferring to wait for the stop of the previous decade. Awaiting the arrival of the convoy are two new friends that the veterans of Human After All and Tron: Legacy have chosen to share their new adventure: Giorgio Moroder, the South Tyrolean-Ladin monument to disco music, and his colleague Nile Rodgers, former Chic member. At the Seventies hotel, they will meet other more recently active colleagues, but let's go in order.
"Random Access Memories" is probably the perfect anti-Daft Punk album, a work that breaks away from the tracks of pure synth-house futurism to build a very particular retro-revival railway that unites avant-gardism and commemoration, horizon and sunset, rebirth and resurrection. In a handful of tracks, the duo concentrates the best of Seventies disco-funk production, updating it à la mode of the vocoder and sprinkling it with the best of electronic evolution, from Kraftwerk's proto-effusions to syncopated techno visions, naturally reviewing the seminal repertoire of the protagonists. Starting from the first excerpt Get Lucky, a funky disco-dance track performed by Pharrell Williams and enriched by Rodgers' riffs, the Saturday Night Fever of Bee Gees and Travolta's memory manifests itself in a work that makes the era of cream-colored suits and slicked-back hair not a bland and temporary tool of commercial revival, but an authentic sonic gem, a monumental bridge between the "sentiment" of the Seventies and contemporary times balancing between futurism and retrospective glances into history.
The dance opens - and not just figuratively - with the first of Rodgers' contributions, namely Give Life Back To Music, and it is already a "I Will Survive" magic with a fresh funky vibe; having overcome the warm retro chill-out composition of The Game of Love, we immediately approach the album's keystone, Giorgio By Moroder, a magnificent (and long) disco-house tribute to Donna Summer's producer in the form of a monologue by the same. With Instant Crush, the vocals of Julian Casablancas from The Strokes announce a softening of the revival work and unravel in a soft-alternative sound akin to The Police. However, the arrival of the Pharrell-Rodgers encore in the single Get Lucky and its worthy successor Lose Yourself To Dance splendidly closes the main part dedicated to the groove of Saturday Night Fever. The last tracks partially continue the funky-instrumental trail with Motherboard and Fragments of Time, and finally attempt not to definitively shelve the traditional futuristic approach, expressing it in the light robot-electronic breeze of Doin' It Right and the eclectic synth-rock-trip hop triumph in Contact.
In a musical landscape where making a revival (and maybe a revival of the revival up to multiple exponential derivations) is almost a contractual obligation, Daft Punk perhaps produce what is a little Bible of good records that "look back" without extremities and extravagancies, masterfully capturing the simplicity of an era. Bionic, robotic, dancing shoes, disco balls, and funky atmospheres therefore coexist peacefully and need no marriage counseling performed by pseudo-sound strategists to placate contrasts. Could this 2013, already fresh from Justin Timberlake's equally funky-sparkling The 20/20 Experience, go down in history as the year of sincere and correct revisions and of genuineness made into a staff? To the pop parliament the arduous verdict.
Daft Punk, "Random Access Memories"
Give Life Back To Music - The Game of Love - Giorgio By Moroder - Within - Instant Crush - Lose Yourself To Dance - Touch - Get Lucky - Beyond - Motherboard - Fragments of Time - Doin' It Right - Contact
Tracklist Samples and Videos
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Other reviews
By Ilpazzo
In an era dominated by HORRIBLE dance music, cold, increasingly computerized, and annoyingly TUNZ TUNZ, there was absolutely a need for someone, ESPECIALLY from the industry, to say 'STOP!' to this mess of cursed noises.
This album is an improvement of Discovery to the max. A sequel that improves the original.
By ElectroKite
Random Access Memories is an excellent album that sounds modern and at the same time presents that typical flavor of the years between the Seventies and the Eighties.
This new record is courageous, and is fresh and retro at the same time.
By Gardenio
"Random Access Memories is boring, sluggish, self-referential, dull, useless, empty, pretentious, unpleasant, sterile, bland, indigestible, amateurish, annoying, arrogant, stupid, and banal."
"The album is musically poor, lacking ideas and banal, packaged specifically to satisfy the most diverse listeners, to be blasted on the radio, and to make the most superficial listener cry masterpiece."
By TommasoMotteran
There is no innovation, no complexity, no care, no experiment, no love, no tradition, no meaning, no anger, no conservation, there is absolutely nothing.
Musicians who dedicate their time and talent (assuming there is any, in fact there isn’t) to ruining this world deserve death.
By the dude
"Total disappointment"
"The album was nothing but a jumble of horrible pop songs, swinging from the most commercial pieces to the whiniest ones."
