Random Access Memories

Making it

After Alive 2006/2007, Daft Punk spent about six months on demos in Paris in 2008 and were unhappy with sampling and looping. They put the demos aside to score Tron: Legacy, then decided to work extensively with live musicians. Chris Caswell gathered session players. Bangalter said they wanted to do with people what they used to do with machines and samplers. Samples were avoided, except on the closing track, Contact.

Electronics were limited to drum machines, a custom Modcan modular synthesizer and vintage vocoders. Sessions were recorded to Ampex reels and to Pro Tools at once, so that Daft Punk and the mixer Mick Guzauski could compare analogue and digital. Daft Punk financed the sessions themselves, and Bangalter estimated that the cost was more than one million dollars. Sound On Sound said the pair spent four years on the project.

Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Williams, Pharrell Williams, Julian Casablancas, Chilly Gonzales, Todd Edwards, Panda Bear and DJ Falcon all contributed. Moroder recorded a monologue about his life for Giorgio by Moroder and said Daft Punk would know what to do with it.

Release and reception

The promotion included billboards and television advertisements, among them short ads on Saturday Night Live. Get Lucky was released as a download single on 19 April 2013, and the album followed on 17 May. It is the only Daft Punk album to top the Billboard 200 and topped the charts in twenty other countries. At the 2014 Grammys it won Album of the Year, Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

The Guardian's Alexis Petridis opened his review by noting the advert for the album shown on the Coachella screens, and wrote that the weight of expectation showed how influential Daft Punk were held to be. Rolling Stone placed the album at number 295 on its 2020 list. A 10th-anniversary edition followed on 12 May 2023.