5 things we know about Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ reissue
Two years to the day that Daft Punk announced they were going their separate ways – on 22 February 2021 – the self-styled robots have announced a 10-year anniversary edition of their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, which is due to land on 12 May 2023.
Here are five things we know (or think we know) about the release so far:
1 – It contains an additional 35 minutes of unreleased music, including nine demos and outtakes from recording sessions.
The tracks include Horizon (Overture), Horizon (Japan CD), GLBTM (Studio Outtakes), Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo), GL (Early Take), Prime (2012 Unfinished), LYTD (Vocoder Tests), The Writing Of Fragments Of Time, and Touch (2021 Epilogue).
2 – A second Julian Casablancas collaboration might be among the outtakes. Along with Random Access Memories favourite Instant Crush, Casablancas revealed in 2014 that he recorded a separate track with the duo, which was much weirder than the cut on the album.
“It’s cool, weird. It’s definitely not one tenth as populicious as Instant Crush, but it’s just really weird,” Spin reported The Strokes’ frontman as saying at the time. “It’s like a song that just goes up. It’s like four half-steps up, moving as that on cycle, on repeat. And it’s super bizarre. And it sounds like jazz modern weird. It’s weirder than any song on the record that I know of.”
3 – The music that soundtracked their Epilogue video in 2021 will be on it. As Daft Punk fans noted at the time the duo released their swansong video a couple of years back, the version of Touch that featured was different to that on the album. This version will be included among the additional tracks on the reissue.
4 – It comes with a Lose Yourself To Dance poster. At the time of its release in 2014, Daft Punk unveiled a Star Wars/Blade Runner-esque poster (check it out here) to accompany the Lose Yourself To Dance single, alongside Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. The triple vinyl edition of the re-release will come with a copy of this poster.
5 – It will include spatial audio version. The reissue will be made available for the first time in Dolby Atmos – which will no doubt appeal to die-hard audiophiles. The announcement follows on from a petition on Reddit for Daft Punk to release music in the format.
Bonus: And lastly, Todd Edwards was right! Talking to 909originals recently, the longtime Daft Punk collaborator told us, “They [Daft Punk] aren’t departing from music making. Thomas has spoken to me about things he’s researching and potential projects, and Guy has been active as well.”
As we now know, he’s bang on the money. Bring it on! 🙂
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