For Random Access Memories, Daft Punk made a strange decision for one of the world’s best-known electronic acts: instead of letting the computer solve everything, they deliberately brought musicians, analogue tape and large recording studios back into the centre of the process.
Engineer Peter Franco has described experiments in which material was recorded directly to tape, transferred between tape and Pro Tools, and compared to purely digital versions. The point was not nostalgia. They were listening to what tape physically did to the shape of a sound. Live musicians were recorded in studios including Henson in Los Angeles, while synthesizers such as the Prophet-5, Jupiter-6, Juno-106 and Yamaha CS-80 remained part of the electronic side of the record.
That makes Random Access Memories interesting beyond its songs.
Daft Punk had spent years helping normalise computer-based electronic production, then used their biggest album to question some of the efficiencies that computers had introduced.
A performance had to be good enough to keep. Tape imposed decisions. Musicians contributed tiny variations that would be unnecessarily difficult to program.
The record does not argue that analogue is better than digital. Pro Tools was still part of the process.
What it demonstrates is more useful: a production method has an aesthetic.
The easiest workflow is not always the one that produces the most interesting music.
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/recording-random-access-memories-daft-punk
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