1. It's Not Even The Most Interesting Version Of 'Random Access Memories'
Whilst it's not unheard of for a cover version, remix or edit to improve upon or transmogrify its source material - see Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower', R. Kelly's 'Ignition (Remix)' and pretty much everything that Kieran Hebden has ever got his hands on - a single artist making-over a recently released number one album to stunning effect is surely an unprecedented feat. Or at least it was before 'Random Access Memories'..... Just four short weeks after RAM exposed itself as the new clothes to Daft Punk's robot emperors, two young musicians released the snappily titled 'Random Access Memories Memories'; an artistically and conceptually coherent fourteen track re-working of the Daft Punk album, made entirely outside the mainstream industry. That duo was Darkside (though the album was released under their Daftside moniker) and is made up of the American-Chilean producer/DJ/label boss/all-round polymath Nicolas Jaar, and the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington. https://soundcloud.com/daftside-2/07-daftside-fragments-of-time?in=daftside-2/sets/random-access-memories-1 Darkside's take on 'RAM' strips away the schmaltzy, million dollar sonic bullsh*t which coats the bloated original and replaces it with a heady mix of pulsating drums, lithe guitars, glitching electronics, white noise and roughly-hewn samples (the vocals from Daft Punk's record being chopped and screwed into oblivion). In the hands of Jaar and Harrington 'Beyond' becomes a gorgeous hybrid of melancholy funk and deep house; 'Get Lucky' is mutated into otherworldly space blues; 'Fragments of Time' sounds like a Steely Dan cut being sired by minimal-techno demigod Ricardo Villalobos rather than Sarah Brightman's ex-husband; whilst the jagged tech of 'Instant Crush' wouldn't sound out of place on 'Homework'. The uncompromising outsider ethos which Daft Punk's debut celebrated is alive and well in 2013, it's just not evident in the French duo's own blockbuster paean to the music industry of yore. Instead it's here: On an unofficial, self-produced 'remix' album, made without financial backing and released for free on Soundcloud. Darkside's take on 'RAM' is a dense, sometimes challenging record (it seems unlikely that the cast of Eastenders will be pirouetting around The Vic to the frenetic jungle of 'Motherboard' any time soon), though it successfully highlights many of the flaws which have been often overlooked in reviews of the original. It's the sound, as Daft Punk acolyte James Murphy sang on LCD Soundsystem's 'Losing My Edge', of "the kids coming up from behind".