daft punk

Daft Punk‘s critically acclaimed album Random Access Memories is getting a 2023 re-release in honor of the project’s 10-year anniversary, the duo announced via Twitter on Wednesday (Feb. 22).

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The new edition of Random Access Memories — which won the Grammy for album of the year in 2014 — will include 35 minutes of additional material across nine tracks, including unreleased demos and studio outtakes. Fans will have their choice of two different formats for the project: a double CD or a vinyl set with three LPs. The CD set will include a 20-page digital booklet, while the vinyl set will include a special Lose Yourself to Dance poster and 16-page booklet. For the first time ever, an Atmos mix of the original album will be made available on streaming.

Tracks on the album include the singles “Get Lucky” (Grammy winner for record of the year in 2014) and “Lose Yourself to Dance,” both featuring Pharrell Williams, as well as “Instant Crush” with Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, “Doin’ It Right” and “Give Life Back to Music.”

Released in May 2013, Random Access Memories spent a total of 54 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, including two weeks in the No. 1 spot. Lead single “Get Lucky” spent five weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The 10th-anniversary edition of Random Access Memories is available to pre-order now; the LP will begin to ship on May 12. See Daft Punk’s announcement and the album’s official track list below.

Random Access Memories 10th-anniversary track list

“Give Life Back to Music”“The Game of Love”“Giorgio by Moroder”“Within”“Instant Crush”“Lose Yourself to Dance”“Touch”“Get Lucky”“Beyond’”“Motherboard”“Fragments of Time”“Doin’ It right”“Contact”“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”“Touch” (2021 Epilogue)

The Daft Punk camp has been as quiet as an empty nightclub since the French icons officially announced their breakup in February 2021. But Tuesday (Jan. 24) offers tangentially related Daft Punk news by way of the group’s Thomas Bangalter.

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This April, the producer will release his first solo album, an orchestral project called Mythologies. The work comes with a predictably high-pedigree backstory, having been commissioned by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj for the ballet of the same name. The show premiered in Bordeaux at the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine.

A press release on this project states that the 90-minute score “reveals a love of Baroque music and hints to traces of American minimalism, its brief phrases subjected to a process of progressive variation.” The orchestral work does not incorporate any electronic elements. See its cover art below.

The project, out April 7 via Erato/Warner Classics, began in fall 2019 when Preljocaj invited Bangalter to write the music for a new work. Preljocaj advised that this piece was intended for 10 dancers from the Opéra National de Bordeaux’s ballet company, 10 others from Preljocaj’s own company and the house’s resident orchestra.

“This invitation,” the press release continues with a wink to kismet, “arrived at the very moment that Bangalter was itching to write for a full orchestra.”  

The resulting 23-scene production and its corresponding music do nothing less than “delve into the legacy shared by all of humankind by embracing the ancient and modern myths that reflect and shape us.”

“I think all artists should have freedom,” Bangalter’s father Daniel Vangarde told Billboard last November. “I helped Thomas, Guy-Man and their friends as much as I could to allow them to release without barriers. They were only 20 years old and the industry could have squeezed them — a normal contract generates interference between your work and the time it’s released… My input was to help create a good environment that allowed them to produce freely.”

Thomas Bangalter, “Mythologies”

Stephane Manel