Give Life Back to Music
One of the ambitions of this album is to bring both something lighthearted and elegant to the table. John Robinson Jr plays the drums here. He was a part of Michael Jackson’s album ‘Off The Wall’. What’s fantastic about a performance likes his is the infinite nature of nuances: something we weren’t used to with electronic programming… The records produced by Quincy Jones have always fascinated us with their extraordinary precision, which is yet to be achieved by any technology. It’s kind of the fundamental difference between ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’. In the latter album, the tracks are of a very high standard, but the performances are less varied.
The Game of Love
We sing with vocoders. In an era in which human voices are changed to sound robotic, we thought it was exciting to make a robotic voice sound as human as possible. The idea of an artificial intelligence who is nearing man… An emotion from something that isn’t human, but is trying to be.
Giorgio by Moroder
We met him a couple of years ago; he’s always been a kind of mythical and quite a mysterious figure for us. His personal journey follows music’s in general. The idea came to us of a documentary-style song based on an interview we did. Giorgio Moroder’s voice was recorded using several microphones from several different eras… We then recorded three hours of interviews during which he was talking about his life as a musician. This piece is a metaphor about musical freedom: we have always tried to break barriers between musical genres, between good and bad taste, cool things and unfashionable ones. Giorgio is a kind of model of the genre. He was in a little provincial town, started singing in hotel lounges, opened for Johnny Hallday, then started making progressive rock. Hearing him say, aged 72, ‘Ah, I was making electronic music 40 years ago’, is fascinating.
Within
Gonzalas plays piano on this song. He’s a friend of ours and a great pianist, one of the best musicians of his generation. ‘Within’ is one of the first songs we recorded. His style is very minimal: a bit of rhythmic section, a bass, a piano. Creating the essential with very little was the idea behind this track.
Instant Crush
Julian Casablancas from the Stokes sings this. We’re both big fans of him and found out he wanted to meet us. We had this demo lying around, he came along, he had a listen and he loved it! He’s got a kind of gift. Deep down, we love rock music and the concept of a rock ‘n’ roll band, but there were so many strong acts that the birth of a new voice was quite difficult at one point. Recently though, the Strokes and MGMT – both with different dimensions and sensibilities – have managed to pull it off. Julian’s got a punk rock side to him, a really strong emotional quality to his melodies. It was important to get him for this album, to feel like we were surrounded by our peers.
Lose Yourself to Dance
This song is the sums up our aim in the easiest way: to make an album which is both very polished and simple at the same time, with an axe bass, drums and guitar – and robots! It’s the opposite of something over-worked. Our fantasy was to transform dance music using drums … Recording it in that way gave us huge satisfaction: we’re proud that it’s a real drum kit on the album and not a rhythm box. There are two drummers on the disc, John Robinson Jr, who holds the record of being the most recorded drummer in the world, and Omar Hakim, who begin his career with Stevie Wonder aged 16.
Touch
This track is the core of the album. It’s the starting point for the whole album, which came about after meeting Paul Williams. A sound engineer we knew introduced him to us. Paul [a film soundtrack composer and actor] came to visit us in the studio. Something very cinematographic and narrative was born form this meeting. ‘Touch’ defines the psychedelic aspect of ‘Random Access Memories’. This song has 250 beats, so it’s the most complicated and the craziest.
Get Lucky
Pharrell Williams sings on this track: it felt natural to invite him to be part of our album. He’s a born performer in every way, who oozes elegance. He’s not always had the opportunity to show he can be an excellent singer, even though he has his place in the patheon of mythical performers. There is no imaginary line which divides the great artists of the past and today’s musicians, who are supposedly less good than before. We wanted to give the impression of being in a capsule, in the studio, cut off from the rest of the word. You might feel like you’re in 1978 [listening to the track], but our idea is to make this music travel in the present and the future, see what happens and observe if the enthusiasm works.
Beyond
Another song done with Paul Williams, who wrote the words. It’s a very cosmic sounding song with very poetic and pure lyrics. We chatted a lot with Paul about the album’s direction, and it was interesting that he was able to put our ideas down in words.
Motherboard
A futuristic song, which could be straight out of the year 4000…
Fragments of Time
Our reunion with Todd Edwards [house music composer] after ‘Discovery’.
Doin’ it Right
The angelic voice is Panda Bear’s [from the band Animal Collective]. We love the solo stuff he did, as well as his band’s whole vibe. This song – the only electronic one on the album – was the last one we recorded. As a result it feels very relaxing. It’s without a doubt the most futuristic and modern track