I’m not sure there’s another band that is as captivating as Daft Punk is right now. I’ve been thinking about them a bit recently: they’re gearing up to release a new album on a new label and have managed to keep nearly everything under wraps: we know the new album’s name (Random Access Memories), have a rough idea what it’ll sound like (vaguely like disco) and that’s about all we can say with any degree of confidence.
Everything else comes under a sense of assumption: we assume the new record’s cover will be the two masks, fused together in the middle. We assume it’s all going to sound like the 15-second clip. But we don’t know, which is cool in an age where everything gets leaked. For all we know, this album could be a bunch of Diana Ross covers. It could be their Organic Record, in the sense their last album was their Guitar Record and Homework was their Lo-Fi record.
So with this lack of knowledge about Daft Punk’s new album, it’s almost like there’s a clean slate. It could be anything, which means it’s currently everything to everyone. All we have are two 15-second clips. And that’s enough: the internet is crawling, buzzing with remixes and edits of those clips. I can’t think of anything like this before: who else can tease an album with so little and have so many different interpretations? What follows is some of my favorite remixes and edits of that small taste.
First up is the most simple of all the clips: a loop of just one sample. This one goes for ten full hours. Its overkill, sure, but there’s an interesting charm to this: it sounds like it’s building to something but can’t, it’s just the same clip. I’ve kept this loop on for a good 30 minutes without realizing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you do the same.
For comparison’s sake, here’s a better one that lays both samples on each other. It shows how well put together Daft Punk’s songs are: really, they can be broken down into pieces (the video for Around the World does this explicitly), but everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Here we go into remixes proper. This one takes the sample and plays around with it a bit. It goes a bit further than just looping: it adds a bassline, drums and builds off the chord structure. I like the icy keyboards, myself. It feels a little slower than the sample, a little funkier and reminds me a bit of the stuff I liked best off Homework. It’s a little long for my tastes, though.
Here’s another one, by Dubsky. I like that this one adds some new textures: a piano (which I’m surprised Daft Punk haven’t used before, actually) and some horns. It isn’t especially adventurous, but it feels a little more natural. To my ears, these acoustic sounds fit into the sample a lot more easily than synths or electric keyboards. If it’s going to sound like it came from the 70s, why not use stuff they used back then? (Ed. Note: Video has since been yanked and is no longer available.)
I like this one by Sundance, which is less of a remix than a re-interpretation, adding new instruments (keyboards, guitars and maybe a harmonica?). Oh and they sing on it, too. I don’t know if I quite like the lyrics, which seem to be about the new Daft Punk album (“it might be good or it might blow”) but I’ll admit it works.
My personal favorite is Dream Logic’s remix, takes the sample and runs wild with it, all but making their own song from it’s bare bones. I actually think it’s better than anything on Human After All, too. Wonder how it’ll hold up against Daft Punk’s track? Pretty well, I’d bet.
It was only a matter of time before somebody mashed this up against Justice’s D.A.N.C.E, right?