Category Archives: fun
Random Access Memories
Daft Punk’s new album, Random Access Memories, is now out. I love it, but it certainly is a change from their earlier efforts. Instead of being more or less pure electronica created from samples, the album features various artists playing real instruments (including Nile Rogers, who created the disco group Chic and, believe it or not Paul Williams). My favorite song so far is “Get Lucky” the first single from the album.
Sasha Frere-Jones reviews the album in the current New Yorker. Here is an excerpt:
Daft Punk’s fourth studio album, “Random Access Memories,” is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for “Discovery.” As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they’ve spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?
Ken Tucker also reviewed the album on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Daft Punk has also released podcast with a series of short videos highlighting the various musicians who worked with them on the album. Well worth a look.
Related articles
- The best song from Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ is not even on the album (dangerousminds.net)
- Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (thetimes.co.uk)
- Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories hailed as ‘amazing’ and ‘bliss’ after iTunes stream (metro.co.uk)
Jimmy Kimmel at UNLV
Jimmy Kimmel compares his commencement address at UNLV to President Obama’s at Morehouse College:
1986 in twelve minutes
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Travel tweet of the day
Virgin America flight attendant on landing: “If your mobile device is within reach, you can stop pretending it’s turned off now.”
— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) May 14, 2013
Great Leno show prank
Ender’s Game – the movie
Ender’s Game, a sic-fi novel written by Orson Scott Card, has been made into a movie that will premier on November 1, 2013.
The first trailer for the film just came out and it looks good to me.
Charles Ramsey: hero
Charles Ramsey helped rescue the three kidnapped women in Cleveland earlier this week. He is a real American character, and Jimmy Kimmel captured his ability to tell a story.
Google Glass gets the SNL treatment
The tender side of Russian dashcam videos
(via Kottke)
The end of another workweek
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Welcome to the Motor City
New Pet Shop Boys album in July
The Pet Shop Boys have announced that their new album, Electric, will be released on July 19. You can pre-order at iTunes. The album was produced by Stuart Price.
They have also released this video of the song Axis, from the new album.
Related articles
- Pet Shop Boys Announce New Album ‘Electric’, Produced by Stuart Price: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
- Pet Shop Boys sign to new label (bbc.co.uk)
Remembering 1999 pop music
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Be careful what you wish for
London housewife Barbara Carter won a “grant a wish” charity contest, and said she wanted to kiss and cuddle a lion. Wednesday night she was in a hospital in chock and with throat wounds. Mrs. Carter, forty-six, was taken to the lions’ compound of the Safari Park at Bewdley Wednesday. As she bent forward to stroke the lioness, Suki, it pounced and dragged her to the ground. Wardens later said, “We seem to have made a bad error in judgment.”
– British News Bullentin, 1976, quoted in the Spring 2013 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, which is focused on animals.
