Since first leaking online and the appearing as full stream on iTunes a week ago, fans have had plenty of time to familiarise themselves with Daft Punk’s über-hyped Random Access Memories, which also saw 4,000 revellers hitting the regional town of Wee Waa for the ‘global launch’ last weekend for a lights and music spectacular.
If you haven’t got enough of the Parisian pair’s new studio album yet – which seems to be the case considering 11 of its 13 tracks hogged the newly launched Spotify Charts streaming Top 50 – another track from Random Access Memories has surfaced online.
The offcut is actually the ‘exclusive’ bonus track on the Japanese edition of the album, an outdated practise that sees Japanese consumers getting a little something extra to encourage domestic purchases over cheap imports, but in the digital era the ‘exclusive’ part has become quite redundant, with Daft Punk’s ‘Horizon’ now emerging online.
The instrumental piece begins with lush acoustic guitar, which is in itself a bit of a shock, even by Random Access Memories dance-defying standards, and the gorgeous, lilting piece takes in slide guitar and hazy synth work with a cinematic flavour closer to album cuts ‘Motherboard’ and ‘Beyond’ than the funkified likes of ‘Get Lucky’. It’s certainly a pretty chilled way to finish the album after the rollicking Sherbs-sampling (Daryl Braithwaite royalties paying) closing number ‘Contact’.
Easily the year’s (if not the decade’s) most hyped release, Daft Punk teased the release of Random Access Memories through a devilishly plotted marketing campaign involving a slow drip-feed of information, including the online making-of series ‘The Collaborators’, featuring interviews with the record’s list of A-grade musicians, including Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Todd Edwards, Pharrell Williams, Panda Bear from Animal Collective, Chilly Gonzales, DJ Falcon, and Paul Williams.
Now that Random Access Memories has embedded itself in the ears of music lovers, the reactions have been varied. While some outlets have noted it fails to live up to the hype, our own Tone Deaf reviewer applauded Daft Punk’s shift in direction and the album’s “utterly human feeling,” awarding an 8.5 score.
While Tone Deaf writer Al Newstead plumbed the depths of Random Access Memories and emerged with an opinion piece covering computer analogies, conspiracy theories, and talk of ‘prog-disco’ and Steely Dan, which you can read below after some flashy images of the Japanese edition of the album.
