On Its 10th Anniversary, Does Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ Still Hold Up?

On 17 May 2013 those iconic French housers Daft Punk released what would be their biggest, and final, album, Random Access Memories (RAM) — home to the omnipresent bop ‘Get Lucky’ featuring Pharrell Williams and ’70s funk legend Nile Rodgers.

A musical departure, RAM divided fans but topped charts in Australia and elsewhere. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo went on to collect five Grammys, including Album Of The Year. 

Now being re-issued for its 10th anniversary, RAM deserves reappraisal. Indeed, as de Homem-Christo told this writer in 2006, “People change their minds about what we do”. Today, RAM represents the culmination of Daft Punk’s nearly three-decade run, and is still the duo’s most ambitious and authentic outing. 

In the ’90s Daft Punk epitomised French house, which the media often loftily branded ‘French touch’ — a sonic aesthetic as much as genre. They cultivated future nostalgia — radically flipping, and phasing, old records and liberally using vocoder.

Bangalter and de Homem-Christo established themselves in the underground before becoming household names — their rise chronicled in 2015’s documentary Daft Punk Unchained, which, fitting their trademark mystique, they tacitly approved yet didn’t participate in.

In fact, Bangalter was a disco nepo baby, his father the prolific producer Daniel Vangarde. The school friends had formerly launched an indie band, Darlin’, but gravitated to dance music — the title of their nu-disco vehicle prompted by a missive from a UK critic of Darlin’’s rudimentary guitar-pop.

They signed to the credible Scottish label Soma, gritty Glasgow a techno hub. Daft Punk broke out with 1995’s single ‘Da Funk’ — which just turned 28 — and were soon courted by majors. Even then, their charismatic manager Pedro Winter was laying out plans for world domination.

In 1997, Daft Punk debuted on Virgin Records with Homework — an instant classic. On the track ‘Teachers’, Daft Punk cited all their house and techno idols, beginning with Chicago’s late Paul Johnson. The next year, they were booked to DJ at Australia’s fabled Apollo Festival, but only Bangalter landed — de Homem-Christo, who suffers from a fear of flying, never made it to the plane. 

In the meantime, the media-shy Daft Punk started concealing their faces with bags and Halloween masks. They were following a tradition in dance music of maintaining strategic anonymity fostered by The KLF and Detroit’s Underground Resistance. As they rolled out 2001’s Discovery, Daft Punk eccentrically styled themselves as robots with custom helmets — projecting a striking image and generating their own mythology. They conducted interviews in character.

Discovery ushered in Daft Punk’s pop era. They enjoyed a massive crossover hit with the lead single ‘One More Time’ featuring Romanthony, a hallowed New Jersey DJ and producer — peak filter house. Though Discovery is the dance counterpart to a concept album, some purists grumbled that it was too commercial. Pitchfork gave Discovery a scathingly contrarian review. Ultimately, Discovery captured a New Millennium’s euphoria. In 2012 it inspired the formation of Australia’s popular Daft Punk tribute act Discovery, who still perform today.

For their third foray, Human After All (HAA), Daft Punk embraced techno — with a creeping menace. This release, even the commercial response was muted. Regardless, the album gained belated currency after Daft Punk’s headlining set at 2006’s Coachella. Their pyramid stage design was game-changing. The duo toured Australia for the first — and last — time with their Alive spectacular in late 2007. Unusually, Daft Punk scored a Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album with Alive 2007, a live recording from their Paris leg of the Alive 2007 tour, which took place at Paris’ Accor Arena (then the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy).

Along the way, Daft Punk were accused of being culture vultures — with commentators questioning their reformulation of classic house, and reliance on samples, as another instance of the historically contentious co-option of Black IP by white artists. There were conspiracy theories, too — with rumours circulating that Daft Punk hired robot ‘doppelgängers’, notably DJ Falcon, a Bangalter collaborator, to perform live.

Post-HAA, Daft Punk moved to Columbia Records — 2012’s ‘Get Lucky’ was a comeback single. Williams’ presence wasn’t the cynical A&R manoeuvre it appeared to be, though — Daft Punk had previously commissioned The Neptunes to remix Discovery‘s ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’. RAM arrived as Daft Punk’s most conspicuously guest-laden project with additional cameos by The Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas and Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, but it was less about ostentatious curation than creative maximalism.

In the weeks leading up to RAM, Romanthony passed — which Daft Punk have never acknowledged publicly. But, in the vein of ‘Teachers’, they dedicated a RAM number to another hero. Disco innovator Giorgio Moroder virtually gives a TED talk on ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, albeit set to music. Plus, Daft Punk reunited with Discovery‘s Todd Edwards, again a DJ/producer/vocalist, for ‘Fragments Of Time’ — soft rock far from his proto-speed garage.

If RAM initially dismayed Daft Punk’s day ones, it was because the music wasn’t conspicuously dancy. The androids revel in vintage funk, their touchstones Rodgers’ band Chic and Californian yacht rock — Bangalter having transplanted to LA to pursue soundtrack work. RAM has ballads — the plaintive ‘Within’, spotlighting Canadian Chilly Gonzales’ piano, a throwback to Discovery‘s ‘Verdis Quo’, itself modelled on progressive rock like ELO and Supertramp. 

Alas, RAM didn’t spawn successive hits to match Discovery (a second song with both Pharrell and Rodgers, ‘Lose Yourself To Dance’, proved ephemeral). But it finds Daft Punk at their artistic zenith — the pair eschewing samples for complex arrangements and greater live instrumentation, and favouring analogue over digital technology yet crucially avoiding self-indulgence. Ironically, the most polarising moment was its climax: ‘Touch’, avant-garde kitsch sung by a sentimental Paul Williams, who’s composed for The Carpenters and The Muppet Movie, as well as a choir. In a mixed review, DJ Mag deemed it “frankly dreadful”. Wrong. 

Bizarrely, Australian rocker Daryl Braithwaite — yes, of ‘The Horses’ fame — received a writing credit for RAM‘s closer ‘Contact’. An older track Falcon co-produced, it samples 1981’s ‘We Ride Tonight’ by Braithwaite’s former band Sherbet. The singer admitted to AAP that he was unfamiliar with the Frenchmen. “I’d heard of Daft Punk but I thought they were heavy metal.” And RAM threw up another Australian twist. A much-hyped global launch was oddly held in the regional town of Wee Waa in NSW. Unsurprisingly, the robots didn’t show. 

In 2014 Daft Punk became the inaugural electronic dance act to win AOTY at the Grammys (‘Get Lucky’ was proclaimed Record Of The Year) amid EDM’s takeover of the US mainstream. They continued to collaborate in the studio with hip-hop and R&B stars, especially Kanye West. Ye had sampled vocals from ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ for ‘Stronger’ and subsequently recruited Daft Punk as producers on 2013’s Yeezus. The outfit contributed to The Weeknd’s opus Starboy — a precursor to Beyoncé’s celebratory RENAISSANCE. 

In early 2021, the otherwise inactive Daft Punk suddenly announced their demise by uploading the mini-movie Epilogue — figuratively shedding their personas as an alternative version of Touch played. Despite years of critical discourse, the robots had seemingly long intuited fans’ emotional connection to their music — ensuring that the Daftermath still feels ever poignant.

Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition) is out now.

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