Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

IDM MOMENT #777

WHEN PITCHFORK GIVES DAFT PUNK A HIGHER SCORE THAN AUTECHRE

lol

What a joke

  On 5/20/2013 at 12:51 PM, modey said:

IDM MOMENT #777

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN PITCHFORK GIVES DAFT PUNK A HIGHER SCORE THAN AUTECHRE

FITX

Zole yeah that's it

music journalism.txt

I ordered this a couple of days ago, and I don't care. Even if I hated it at first, it's a very crisp record and I enjoy it. But it isn't an 8.8 record, nor is it better than Bibio's Silver Wilkinson (which is slowly becoming one of my favourite records this year).

  On 5/20/2013 at 12:54 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/20/2013 at 12:51 PM, modey said:

IDM MOMENT #777

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN PITCHFORK GIVES DAFT PUNK A HIGHER SCORE THAN AUTECHRE

FITX

 

The IDM was too extreme for them.

wow, pitchfork fucked up. This whole thing is just wishful thinking.

It seems like a clear case of buyer's remorse; as triachus said, they invested so much energy in making that "cover story" that they were much more likely to talk themselves into liking the album, no matter how lame it turned out.

That's the optimistic interpretation. My preferred, pessimistic interpretation: pitchfork is fucking corrupt and their lining their pockets with money from Big Record Label. This interpretation is consistent with that Justin Timberlake garnering a "Best New Music" title.

There's no way that "RAM" is better than "Silver Wilkinson". FUCK PITCHFORK.

Giving marks to music is silly in general, let alone on the decimal scale that Pitchfork uses, and I don't want to go into how it compares to any of the other albums you guys mentioned. But for the most part the review did nail what I like so much about this record. I am truly sorry WATMM.

your avatar is forgiven.

  On 5/19/2013 at 3:19 AM, Hoodie said:

 

  On 5/19/2013 at 1:12 AM, Amen Warrior said:

Oh do they play instruments now?? Sorry I literally have not read anything about it (including this topic!) or heard any samples. So they've finally stopped making 4 second loops of barry manilow tracks, adding a 909 kick and calling it a day?! ;)

 

honestly i prefer the groovy filtered sample + 909 kick formula to this album.

 

ditto

  On 5/20/2013 at 10:08 AM, MaartenVC said:

Sooo this album got an 8.8 on Pitchfork...

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18028-daft-punk-random-access-memories/

 

Discovery 6.4

Human After All 4.9

 

? lol i guess

Also, a really entertaining 1.3 for Daft Club and a 7.6 for Homework and in a prime example of infamous before-pitchfork-was-famous-or-respected writing, behold the entire review:

  Quote

 

What's up with the French? Man, it seems like every up and coming electronica band these days is from France. Personally, I don't know anyone from France. Why all the good music? France? Are they sure? What's in France, anyway? They have a big, famous tower. Did they give us the Statue of Liberty? I'm having a lot of trouble with this.

Oh, Daft Punk. They're French. And you probably didn't know it, but these guys have more rhythm than Max Weinberg on fast-forward. You could go into a record store and say, "Christ! For $14.99, this disc should be able to sing and dance!" Unfortunately, that's gonna be left up to you. However, Homework manages to throb, bleep, scratch, trip, hop, freak and boogie. It sounds like an Atari 2600 on a killing spree.

Homework provides sixteen whole tracks of modern-day boom box bass n' drum and unlike your science project, it doesn't require a lot of intricate calculations to figure out how it works. It just does.

What pisses me off about Pitchfork's recent Best New Music reviews is that the reviews are rarely as glowing as the score itself, and likewise some of the most positive sounding reviews are mere 5s and 6s. It wasn't a bad review as a read, but it would of made sense if they gave it just a 6 or 7. The 8.8 is completely forced. Good music reviews seem more often-than-not written by well-informed and passionate fans of niche scenes and genres (many of the freelance writers at pitchfork fall in this category). The days of unsung bands and artists being brought to fame by music journalists taking risks in their reputation are essentially over, it's just a romantic notion now. Pitchfork reviews 10+ years ago were entertaining to browse, even if they were often annoying or infuriating to read. Now the same site gives a Justin Timberlake album a 8.4 and rarely releases a hyper-critical or even contrarian review anything.

I like a few of the tracks here, I think Motherboard is the one I find most listenable. Though I think that interview on BBC is a bit deceiving. He talks about how creating music with the computer and people using presets makes artists lazy and all that, yet big hits on their Discovery album was whole sale sampling of entire song choruses etc that they didn't write. That is more lazy than taking a snare drum or mangling a voice in Ableton in my opinion.

As for the pitchfork review mentioning "music that still takes money to make" or whatever is just hilarious. I can see the sentiment of the album being a one time unique event and a creation of many components that don't get together again, like artists, gear, a stretch of time and opportunity, but that happens on my computer all the time. Most tracks nowadays are an amalgamation of thousands of peoples individual work, whether they made a synth, recorded an instrument for a sample pack, hell even created the Operating system the DAW runs on. This can lead to a lot of unique things that will never be combined again. Beyond that, simply using some randomization features or general jamming can lead to moments occurring that will be very hard if not impossible to get back.

And as far as listeners go, and pitchfork's rant about the 'album' - I don't agree with that either. I think the album is alive and has been alive for a long time. Simply because we have the option to not play it all through doesn't mean people don't, and the world is far too complex and diverse to make such an assertion. Perhaps Daft Punk's general audience is all about singles and youtube playlists and the next big thing, and in that sense the album fits, but it sounds like they are talking broader than that. Though I can appreciate their sentiments. It's not like it's totally without merit. Maybe it will open up for more albums of this type... The world is falling apart, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Edit: Although I forgot they mentioned "EDM", so I guess it's contained to that.

remember how good this is?

http://youtu.be/fpthkUCuKgY

That was a good album for going for walks, i remember alternating that and drum and bass.

the best track from RAM... the only good one. (sounds like new BoC without children),

http://nobpm.tumblr.com/post/50990752528/daft-punk-horizon-japan-bonus-track

  On 5/21/2013 at 10:48 PM, logakght said:

the best track from RAM... the only good one. (sounds like new BoC without children),

 

http://nobpm.tumblr.com/post/50990752528/daft-punk-horizon-japan-bonus-track

Nice.

I don't really care for Daft Punk. I don't dislike them. I don't love them. I'm ambivalent towards them.

Just listening to the new album on Spotify. I'm enjoying it so far.

Had a skip through to see if it seems like it's worth a purchase. Sounds decent to me. Not something I would usually listen to but I dunno, I was expecting something terrible after all the negative feedback. Then again, I love [decent] electronic pop music.

i listened to this on my way to and from work today and am very pleasantly surprised. I am not a big Daft Punk fan. But this album is just fun and easy to listen to without overdoing it with beats. I can honestly say that I really like most of the songs on first listen.

My favorites are:

doing it right

contact

instant crush

lose yourself to dance

touch

giorgio by moroder

But really there's only two or three tracks that I'm not crazy about.

I was thinking that this album is really going after this EDM craze (deadmaus/skrillex/etc). But Daft Punk are more fun, and, their music is infused with a lot of history. And they've just totally transcended any genre and just mix/match at will. It kind of reminded me of when I first heard Beck - Midnight Vultures. So, I like it a lot.

Yeah I'm really enjoying this LP too. Maybe it helps to only be a casual daft punk fan and not come in with too many preconceptions? I dunno. I think it might be my favourite release of theirs funnily enough, and after listening to it a few times I just went out and bought the vinyl. I regret nothing.

I can understand people REALLY not liking it, but some of the criticism here seems a bit much. Whether it's your sort of thing or not, it does succeed at achieving what it sets out to do, and puts enough of a twist on things to put it beyond simple pastiche.

not a daft punk fan. gave this a spin. at first i was like "ok i get it" then i lost interest. first impressions/

  On 5/23/2013 at 11:59 PM, Jimmy McMessageboard said:

not a daft punk fan. gave this a spin. at first i was like "ok i get it" then i lost interest. first impressions/

Yeah same here, lost interest already.

This is album is brilliant, love how eclectic and unusual it is [and massively enjoyable]. Definately a good thing for Pop music.