Daft Punk's Random Access Memories is now less than a week away, even though most fans have already listened to the entire album multiple times through. The French duo made the album available on iTunes via live stream a week before its release, and naturally, someone found a way to hack the stream and make the album available for download. Regardless, loyal fans will likely hold out until the official release. In the meantime, a slew of interviews with the robots have been flooding the Internet.
In this week's NME, Daft Punk opens up about their musical influences and opinions on modern electronic music. In fact, they said they didn't even listen to much "electronic music" and are selective of the DJs they listen to.
"Deadmau5? No. I wouldn't listen to Deadmau5 for pleasure," said Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter. "Skrillex we have a lot a respect for. He's said that he saw our live show with the pyramid in 2007 and it made him want to make music, but it feels like he's not copying our formula. He might be the kid that breaks the cycle, but we don't listen to a lot of electronic music."
Daft Punk's counterpart Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo expanded on Bangalter's thoughts. "I don't know EDM artists or the albums. At first I thought it was all just one guy, some DJ called EDM," he said, agreeing that a lot of EDM (electronic dance music) sounds similar. "Maybe it's just one guy called Eric David Morris."
One of the key Random Access Memories collaborators, Todd Edwards, whose groundbreaking career pioneered the cut-up sample technique that spawned the U.K. garage style dance music, spoke to New York Times about his work with the robots and how the new album will reshape the common conception of EDM.
"I think people have been associating the Daft Punk album as a strict disco album, but I wouldn't say that," Edwards said. "Everyone is making that judgment off of 'Get Lucky.' But that track is not definitive. I think the whole concept of the Daft Punk album is a return to a warmth in dance music. It's about allowing dance music to have an organic sound, but still making it dancey and catchy."
Now that the album has leaked, most of the hype has passed. It's time to sit back and let the reviews pour in. In lieu of providing a track by track review, let me just say this:
Listen to the album a few times through. Although it may seem disappointing at first, it's because you're comparing it to their previous albums. Random Access Memories is not what you may have expected, and it takes some time getting used to, but once you tap into the album's groove, it's all smooth sailing.
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