Creating a Sound of the Future: Large-scale Transformation in the Personic Environment of Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories"

Paul Garza, University of Houston and Lone Star College-North Harris

This paper seeks to analyze large scale narrative strategies in Daft Punk's Random Access Memories. French electronica duo Daft Punk is known for their curious robotic personae. This album brings the performers into their music and presents a tale of two robots who wish to discover more about themselves and ultimately seek to experience the mysticism of humanity. The irony is that robots have an inherent designed perfection that humans could never have. This tale can be best revealed by utilizing methodologies previously discussed by Alan Moore, Byron Almén, and Mark Spicer.

I posit that changes in Alan Moore's "personic environment" can be understood narratively. Large-scale transformations in the environment of each song represent narrative threads that can be traced through the album. Using this methodology, one can examine how the robots' quest to experience humanity is represented within the music. Large-scale transformations in this album manifest themselves in three primary threads: vocal effects, instrumentation, and rhythm. Tracing how vocoded vocals transform into the human voice, how electronic and acoustic instruments switch places, and how phrase groupings change each reveal a progression towards humanity throughout the first half of the album. Additionally, intratextuality plays a significant role in this album; every song in the second half of the album can be understood as a retelling of the first half through the new lens of humanity.