Daft Punk Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition) 180g 3LP

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 295/500!

2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Daft Punk's multi Grammy-winning hit record Random Access Memories. The album includes the tracks "Get Lucky," "Instant Crush" and "Lose Yourself To Dance," and features Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, Julian Casablancas, Paul Williams, Panda Bear and Todd Edwards.

To celebrate the milestone, this special expanded edition of the album contains 35 minutes of unreleased music in the form of demos and studio outtakes. The triple vinyl includes a special Lose Yourself To Dance poster and a 16-page booklet.

Daft Punk have never shied away from 'uncool' influences or sentimentality, and both are on full display throughout Random Access Memories. It's the kind of grand, album rock statement that listeners of the '70s and '80s would have spent weeks or months dissecting and absorbing — the ambition of Steely Dan, Alan Parsons, and Pink Floyd are as vital to the album as any of the duo's collaborators. For the casual Daft Punk fan, this album might be harder to love than 'Get Lucky' hinted; it might be too nostalgic, too overblown, a shirking of the group's duty to rescue dance music from the Young Turks who cropped up in their absence. But Random Access Memories is also Daft Punk's most personal work, and richly rewarding for listeners willing to spend time with it.

Having played a massive role in the rise of EDM in the late '00s, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo turned away from EDM altogether for a Seventies disco record featuring appearances by Donna Summer producer Giorgio Moroder and Chic's Nile Rodgers (who played guitar on the gigantic hit 'Get Lucky'). The result was a mushy, otherworldly concept LP that was retro, futuristic, trippy, and weirdly human all at once.

My favorite of these is an eight-minute track that edits together the sessions of DP and artist Todd Edwards working out the details of 'Fragments of Time.' It's a blast to hear the studio chatter and to get a behind the scenes glimpse of the duo's writing process. Otherwise, I just keep returning to the original album and its glorious tribute to the club hits of the '70s and '80s. 10 years later and I'm still chuffed that they managed to rope in icons like Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers and Paul Williams to play around with them in the studio. Everyone sounds like they are in a state of creative bliss throughout.