Daft Punk Debut New Web Series

With their new record, Random Access Memories, on the way, Daft Punk are kindly offering the world short tutorials on some of their collaborators: legendary names like Nile Rodgers, Paul Williams, Panda Bear, Chilly Gonzales and Giorgio Moroder, who are all featuring on the LP in some guise or other.

In the clip below, a very Italian Giorgio Moroder – known for his work with disco legend Donna Summer (‘I Feel Love’, ‘Love To Love You Baby’, and all of the other hits, basically) – tells the story of his history with disco, his relationship with digital, his love of Daft Punk, and his story of “how I met ze zynthezizer”.

“Thomas and Guy-Manuel, they are perfectionists,” he says of the French electro duo. “I remember I would try to find a sound on the vocoder and it would take me 20 minutes, maybe an hour. They told me it took them a week or so to find the sound, and then, I don’t know how many days to do the vocals. I think they’re going into every little detail. If you don’t go into all those details, it’s not going to be successful.

Although I must say that my recordings with Donna Summer, we did them basically in hours – because I’m not a detail guy! In fact, I was listening to the 24-track of ‘Love To Love You Baby’, my first hit with Donna Summer, and at the beginning, the baseline is terrible. But at the time I didn’t hear it, so we did it! But that’s not the case with Daft Punk. They wouldn’t have let something like that go.”

Random Access Memories is coming out in an age when anyone can produce a dance album, Moroder says, so Daft Punk wanted to do something new, “in a way that’s not done by just pushing a note or a chord. You definitely hear that it’s nice and full, and the drums and the bass have that warm and that full sound. It’s time to have something new in the dance world,” he says. “I love disco and dance anyway, but this is like a step forward. They had to do something which is different. Still dance, still electronic, but get that human touch back.”