Daft Punk have continued their current trend of teasing hints leading up to the release of a new album. The whole operation has been kept relatively quiet. Confirmation of a new album came last year after the band made the split from EMI after 17 years with the label, following EMI’s $1.9 million merger with Universal Records last year.
The duo of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter then released the first taste of the new album with a 15 second teaser that premiered on Saturday Night Live, creating rumours about the disco-influenced sound of the new album.
Now the band’s website has been updated to premiere the release date and official artwork for the new album.
Random Access Memories has been confirmed as the title for the French duo’s latest LP (a play on the tech term RAM), to be released on the 21st of May. The album will be the first out under Daft Punk’s new label Daft Life Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records. Random Access Memories is already available for presale through iTunes, and physical copies can be ordered online.
Hints on the album have been dropping for a while. There was the Saturday Night Live teaser, which created rumours about the new sound that might be the feature of, the then-unnamed, Random Access Memories. The picture that accompanied the teaser, which has now been confirmed as the album art with the addition of the album title, featured the two halves of the famous Daft Punk helmets merging into a disco ball. Random Access Memories has been confirmed as the title for the French duo’s latest LP (a play on the tech term RAM)…
On top of that, the confirmation that former Chic frontman and funk legend, Nile Rogers, has contributed to the album, along with Giorgio Moroder, famed for his Donna Summer collaborations, all comes together in one shiny disco album.
Rogers seems as excited about the album release as the rest of us. The Chic frontman saying that when he and the French duo jammed together, “every track they played I just ran across the room and got my guitar and started playing and we were all dancing around my dining room having the time of our lives.”
Giorgio Moroder’s additions to the album are a little less orthodox. As previously reported, the producer was asked to go into a booth and speak about his life and career. The resulting ‘rap’ was recorded onto “multiple microphones of various vintages from the ’60s to today.”
When Moroder, no stranger to the studio himself, asked about the need for so much equipment – an engineer replied “that the mic they would use would depend on what decade of his life he was speaking about.” It might seem a small detail, but the engineer was confident that listeners would be able to hear it.
The tracklist for Random Access Memories has also been released, but it doesn’t offer much more than the lengths of each of the thirteen confirmed tracks. As Pitchfork reports, the track lengths were leaked when they were registered with PPL – a UK company that licenses recorded music and distributes royalties.
The songs range from the radio-friendly lengths of three or four minutes, to a nine-minute-long epic. It could be suggested that this will be Moroder’s ‘life set to music’ track, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Random Access Memories is the first official release from Daft Punk since the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy in 2010 and their last proper album since 2005’s Human After All.
There was a fraction of relief for fans at the Yves Saint Laurent Spring/Summer 2013 collection at Paris Fashion Week. Daft Punk and Hedi Slimane, YSL’s creative director are old friends so they put together a 15 minute remix, featuring samples from blues artist Junior Kimbrough, for the show.
So after years of anticipation it’s no wonder that Daft Punk fans are going crazy for all these album teasers. Sadly, May still feels a long way away. But we’re all in the wait together, taking it one 15-second teaser at a time.
You can pre-order Random Access Memories on CD & vinyl here, and view the official album artwork and tracklist (times) below:
Random Access Memories tracklist
01 4:34
02 5:21
03 9:04
04 3:48
05 5:37
06 5:53
07 8:18
08 6:07
09 4:50
10 5:41
11 4:39
12 4:11
13 6:21
