Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

Disco Two Piece For A Boogie Three Piece

Never been heavily into Disco, but in the 70s I’d put on the three-piece suit with flared trousers and go to a nightclub in Ipswich and bourbon-boogie to those disco-beats [quite a sight – in addition to the smooth moves – but my hair was pretty damn long then so with the combination of that, my age (no teenager) and the anachronism of the suit, I will have been a vision – oh yes, and also when with the burly guys I’d bring along from the farm....]. But who can’t be boogiefied by the sheer joyous repetitions of good Disco? 

French duo Daft Punk’s latest Random Access Memories [streamed on iTunes] conjures up all that and more, their own distinctive spin provided by those auto-tuned/manipulated vocals, which are foregrounded on the two opening and excellent tracks Give Life Back To Music – a consummate disco number – and The Game of Love which is quite beautiful in its soulful take on the genre.

There’s an engaging documentaryesque instrumental tribute to Giorgio Moroder on third track, surprisingly Giorgio by Moroder, where the Italian electronic/disco guru narrates his own story before the track moves wholly into its musical grooves. Fourth Within is another pretty if soppy ballad, those coded vocals providing an extra element of syrup.

The rest of the album offers up a varying mix of the same and everything else you would expect, with guest vocalists who will mean more to those who know the genre, but at times it is rather repetitive [more than the inherent nature of the genre] and it could have been edited – but as a background sound it doesn’t perhaps matter. There is a rather theatrical sound to seventh track Touch featuring Paul Williams, so the tangents do exist a little, if you like that sort of thing, and eighth track Fragments of Time featuring Pharrell Williams is fairly bland. Ninth Beyond funks things up quite nicely. But those first two tracks really did/do take me back, and are fine in their own right, as is the album taken as a whole.