BACKGROUND

"The minimalist music has appealingly peculiar personality; the duo doesn't."

Using those words to describe Daft Punk of all bands seems, well, daft. But Spin used those exact words to describe Daft Punk's live show upon the release of the duo's debut LP Homework in 1997.

Daft Punk's Coachella 2006 set was not the first significant festival set to change how dance music was seen by the general public, but it was the first to change how dance music was presented. The pyramid was unlike anything live dance music had ever seen. Daft Punk spent most of their $300,000 Coachella advance building the thing and kept it secret from almost the entire world, including their touring manager. When the pair took the stage on April 29, 2006, the set didn't just popularize dance music. It changed it forever.

While other live sets brought electronic dance music to the public consciousness, such as Orbital's Glastonbury 1994 set, they had still conformed to what raves and clubs were like at the time. Daft Punk's Coachella 2006 set (and Human After All) changed what dance music in the US could look and sound like. Massive light shows are the norm in EDM these days, but Daft Punk's set was the first and arguably still the gold standard in the form.

The same can be said for the live music itself. Alive 2007, the live album culled from the resulting tour, feels just as vital as the band's studio work. An hour-and-a-half-long mega mix of Daft Punk's first three records, it recontextualizes the trio and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that dance music can work on massive festival stages around the world.

The Coachella 2006 performance kickstarted the EDM movement in the United States, with Steve Angello of Swedish House Mafia, Panda Bear of Animal Collective, Skrillex and DJ Falcon all praising the performance or the Alive 2007 tour as the best show they had ever seen. It's not hard to hear Daft Punk's influence in most major EDM hits of the genre's American heyday.

It's also a status Daft Punk were "ambivalent" about having. In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, Thomas Bangalter said, "Electronic music right now is in its comfort zone and it's not moving one inch...You hear a song, whose track is it? There's no signature. Skrillex has been successful because he has a recognizable sound: You hear a dubstep song, even if it's not him, you think it's him."

After revolutionizing EDM once with Human After All, the duo decided to do it again by recording an album using live instruments and pulling inspiration directly from the music of the 1970s and 1980s that so heavily characterized their first three records. Daft Punk eschewed samples almost entirely, electing to call upon storied artists and session musicians such as Nile Rodgers, Nathan East and Omar Hakim "to make music that others might one day sample."

The duo found themselves in a rut in 2008. They started work on a fourth record much like they had the previous three, by using laptops and synthesizers to create loops and song ideas. They hired out a studio and recording engineer Peter Franco. Some elements created during these sessions, such as the synth line in "Giorgio by Moroder," made the final album, but many were also scrapped.

They spent the next two years writing and recording the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy. The experience turned Daft Punk on to the idea of using live musicians and an orchestra on a studio album. Orchestral arrangements were eventually recorded for every song on Random Access Memories, although the arrangements only appear on the final record sparingly, including in "Touch" and "Within."

Daft Punk had their next grand idea: make something real. Make the robotic sound human. And so they (proverbially!) sold their turntables and bought guitars. Or rather, they got Nile Rodgers, Paul Jackson Jr. Julian Casablancas to bring theirs. Six strings appear on all but two of the album's 13 tracks and often form the backbone of the album. Songs like "Get Lucky" and "Lose Yourself to Dance" are based almost entirely around a guitar riff, bass and drums, a far cry from Daft Punk's previous work.

THE ALBUM

Every single penny of the seven-figure sum dumped into the record was worth it. It's the best-produced album of the decade and possibly one of the best-produced disco albums full stop. The entire thing is just so goddamn clean. Even for a record with so many instruments backed into it, nothing ever feels lost in the shuffle. Every instrument is clear as day and the mix is just incredible. It's a testament to Daft Punk as creators and their mixing team as professionals that Random Access Memories sounds as good as it does.

Random Access Memories also represented a significant shift in the scope of Daft Punk's sound. These songs are MASSIVE in a way their previous three records weren't. The biggest hits from Homework, Discovery and Human After All mask the fact that most of the songs on those records are best experienced on headphones.

Not on Random Access Memories.

Even the comparatively understated songs like "Instant Crush" and "Doin' It Right" are awash in reverb and give off the sense of being performed in a huge space. "Giorgio by Moroder" opens with the sounds of a party gathering and Moroder's interview before giving way to one of the best synth lines the duo has ever created. About seven-and-a-half minutes in, drums literally crash the sonic party, allowing the synth line to explode along with a guitar riff that finishes off the song. It's exhausting in a way few DP songs are.

This isn't to say the songs on Random Access Memories aren't jams. Every song on this record is incredible no matter the style they end up taking. And there are quite a few styles on display here! The album cycles through and fuses disco, soul, soft rock, house, electronica and alternative through its 75 minutes, but Random Access Memories sounds like a singular, unbroken vision made more magnificent by its variety and not lessened by it.

CLOSING NOTES

As far as making things others might sample, Random Access Memories has been successful only to a point. A quick scan of the WhoSampled? page reveals only a limited number of references to the album since its release in 2013. The most thorough is Random Access Memories Memories from Darkside. A full remix album put together by electronic musician Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington, Random Access Memories flips the original album on its head and finds new angles.

Still, for its roots in the 70s and 80s, Memories feels timeless and just as vital as the day it was released.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Will Daft Punk ever put out another record?

Did RAM deserve its Album of the Year Grammy?

Where does the album fit within the rest of Daft Punk's discography?

Will RAM be heavily sampled one day or as influential as the band's other work?