Daft Punk’s iconic album, “Random Access Memories,” released on May 17, 2013, reaches its decade milestone this month. Anticipating this momentous occasion, the celebrated French duo teased fans with a few tracks from the commemorative 10th-anniversary edition, which has officially dropped today.
Spanning 35 minutes over 9 tracks, Daft Punk unveils previously unheard outtakes, demos, and songs from the original “Random Access Memories” recording sessions. Each song has its own narrative, which we delve into below.
One such track, titled “Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo),” transports listeners back a decade, capturing the essence of the duo’s recording moments at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles and Electric Lady Studios in New York. Produced prior to the critically acclaimed “Instant Crush” – a collaboration between Daft Punk and Julian Casablancas which later achieved RIAA Platinum status – “Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo)” resonates with a dreamlike, jazzy ambiance. Casablancas reflects on this enigmatic piece, noting, “Its modern jazz chords set it apart from the rest of the album. It feels like an endlessly ascending pattern – with a four half-step cyclical rise. My dream vocalist for it was Stevie Wonder. There’s a hint of island summer in it… it’s charming yet odd, reminiscent of the human nature. It mirrors our fixation with infinity and our perpetual loop of repeating the same actions and errors.”
RAM 10 TRACK BY TRACK
Horizon Ouverture: This first outtake opens with vocals by a childrens’ choir that leads into an instrumental track. This set of tracks is bookended by childrens’ choirs, as the last track in the set, “Touch Epilogue” also contains childrens’ voices. The bookending creates a mirror that emphasizes some of the main themes of this record : future nostalgia, repetition loop and infinity.
Horizon: “Horizon” originally appeared exclusively on the Japanese CD version of Random Access Memories, as a bonus track and has been discovered by fans in the years since release. As the final track on the 2013 Japanese version of the album, “Horizon” gave listeners a gentle, symphonic, peaceful ending to the album. This is its first official global release.
GLBTM (Studio Outtakes): This track is composed of outtakes from “Give Life Back To Music” recording sessions with little-to-no production, and showcases Daft Punk’s experimentation, their energy and what styles they were exploring at the time. It sounds like a jam session, but can be viewed as a research record – listeners can hear multiple inspirations, multiple directions, and multiple versions of what the song could have evolved into.
Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo): The idea of infinity is at the creative core of this album, and is emphasized in this track. Recorded for the original album, “Infinity Repeating” brings back vocals from Julian Casablancas, who also collaborated on “Instant Crush.” Based on an infinity loop, the progression and lyrics to this track will make it echo infinitely. The concept of an infinity loop will also be reflected in the official music video as an epic ascension through human history and fate.
GL (Early Take): This 32 second snippet of what would eventually become a Record of the Year Grammy winner is made up of studio outtakes, some cuts, studio sessions and first tests. It gives a quick glimpse into the makings of the iconic track.
Prime (2012 unfinished): Daft Punk started work on Random Access Memories in 2008, but the project was put on pause when the opportunity to work on the Tron soundtrack presented itself. After the project was released in 2010, the focus turned back to RAM. This track, “Prime (Unfinished)” is emblematic of the time – the unfinished track shows another facet of the creative process and how some works can fall to the side along the way.
LYTD (Vocoder Tests): On this track, listeners get a peek behind the curtain of one of Daft Punk’s signature sounds, the robot voices. Stripping the layers away, listeners hear human voices behind the vocoders, the vocoders that are used to create robot voices. They hear the robots that are looking for themselves, and the humans behind them.
The Writing Of Fragments Of Time: Part musical track, part documentary, this track captures a foundational songwriting moment between Thomas Bangalter and Todd Edwards. With the track production finished by Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo, Todd joins Thomas in the studio to pen the lyrics and come up with the top line melody. The curtain is pulled and the listener witnesses the very moment they come up with the defining melody and lyrics of the song – a first-ever experience with the humans behind the impenetrable robots. The track “Fragments of Time” was foundational to Random Access Memories, in which Todd Edwards (the only artist that worked twice on Daft Punk’s album) sings optimistically about how they will all feel in 10 years. “The Writing of Fragments of Time” is a dream within a dream, exploring future nostalgia, anticipation and inception, like a Russian doll. It’s a “making of” within the “making of.” Ten years after it was created, its release closes the gap of the lyrical message of the song (how will we feel in 10 years?). It’s also a dissociation from the robots, in the prism of a band who is no more.
Touch (2021 Epilogue): This version of “Touch” was used as the soundtrack to Daft Punk’s Epilogue video, the video that announced the end of the band, posted on February 22, 2021. While the original version of the track features vocals from Paul Williams, this version has only vocals from a children’s choir repeating the lyrics “You’re home, hold on, if love is the answer,” again showcasing the core album themes of infinity and repetition loop.
