Daft Punk's Random Access Memories: Dance Music Is Dead
How Daft Punk rediscovered dance's roots, and reimagined the genre's future, in Bigger Than The Sound.
Dance music has always been about liberation, from juke-joint boogie
woogies to discotheque dramas, the rec-room breaks that begat hip-hop
and the heady house music that brought together poseurs and punters
alike.
That may seem like an oversimplification (which is sort of
necessary when considering a genre as fractious as dance), but it
doesn't
have to be: Sure, sharecroppers found release in ragtime and black and Latino youth — both gay
and
straight — drew empowerment from disco, but there's a reason Primal
Scream tacked Peter Fonda's "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do!"
speech to the beginning of "Loaded" ... liberation, it seems, comes in
many forms.
To further that analogy, consider today's EDM, which
seems to exist largely for kids to liberate themselves from their
clothing. And because of that, the genre finds itself at a bit of a
crossroads: Sure, it's never been bigger, but it's hard to argue that
it's ever been more
lunkheaded ... say what you will about the
Chemical Brothers' run in the late '90s, but at least they were smart
enough to make a song like "The Private Psychedelic Reel."
Given that, it's difficult to see where Daft Punk
fit in. For an act so revered, their influence on today's mega DJs
seems fleeting at best — save their now legendary live shows, which set
the gold-standard against which all shall be judged. It's been eight
years since their last true album,
Human After All, and in that
time, dance music has mutated into something neither of them could have
imagined. The cheekiness of "Around The World" or "One More Time" has
been abandoned in favor of walloping tracks that seem better suited to
sports-drink spots or Nicki Minaj singles. Things are certainly Harder,
Faster and Stronger, but they are not necessarily Better.
Which is why their new
Random Access Memories
album makes so much sense: Rather than attempt to dig through the
present, they're rediscovering the past. It is not a reinvention so much
as it is a revolution; their attempt to liberate themselves from dance
music entirely.
Within reason, of course. Because, as you can gather from first single "Get Lucky," there's still plenty to boogie to on
Memories
(the album version of the track, in particular, stretches out into an
opulent disco jam). The other Pharrell feature, "Lose Yourself To Dance"
is flash-fried funk that's still gooey in the middle, building on
guitars and handclaps before gradually fading away on the duo's lithe
robo-vocals. "Doin' It Right," which features Animal Collective member
Panda Bear, works itself into a syncopated shuffle based on little more
than the interplay between voices and some electronic drums. And the
album's most
epic track, "Giorgio by Moroder," begins with an
extended monologue by Moroder himself, pauses momentarily with a
goosebump-raising drop — "My name is Hansjörg Moroder ... but you can
call me Giorgio" — then blasts off with fuzzed-out guitar, strings,
bubbly bass and even some laser bursts for good measure. You will dance
until you drop.
So, having said all that,
why do I consider
this album to be such a dramatic statement? It's the little things, the
attention to detail — the sumptuous production flourishes, the
unmistakable
live feel of the record, the fact they cared enough to get the dude who played guitar on
Thriller to jam on the record — the homages to pioneers like Moroder (large spaces of
Memories
recall some of his best work, particularly the "Midnight Express"
soundtrack) and Nile Rodgers, and the sheer ambition and scope of the
project. But mostly because, despite its
many dance-inducing moments, this is not purely a dance record.
Instead,
Random Access Memories
is a good old fashioned odyssey: Songs like the lengthy, multi-suite
"Touch" (featuring Paul Williams of "Rainbow Connection" fame), the
morose "Within" the wide-screen sized "Beyond" and the lush, liquescent
"Motherboard" require repeated listens, preferably in a darkened room
with the inebriant of your choice. It is decidedly moodier than anything
Daft Punk have done before, not to mention more atmospheric and emotive
... if anything, the robots have never seemed more human. Which may be
tough for folks expecting the spiritual sequel to
Homework; if anything, this seems like the logical successor to
Human After All.
In a lot of ways,
Random Access Memories
seems like the only possible response to dance music in 2013, a
lumbering beast Daft Punk are at least somewhat responsible for
creating. They had to go backwards — to the regal, joyous expanses of
the disco era — in order to move forward, and in doing so, they've
created something entirely new: the first opulent, over-the-top,
one-hundred-percent organic epic of the decade. It's also the least
Daft Punk
album of their careers, which is definitely the point. Like I said,
liberation comes in many forms. Will the kids like it? Probably not ...
but hey, the shirtless masses can at least take solace in this fact:
Apparently, Ultra was
sick this year.
"I have no clue [why people say I'm insane]," Bynes told In Touch this week. "Every time I've heard it, it came from an ugly person's mouth, so I don't care."
