Fans all know what the finished product of Daft Punk‘s studio time sounds like, and now they know more about what it sounds like to be inside the studio with the French icons.
“The Writing of Fragments of Time,” a new release from Daft Punk released Wednesday (March 22), is a more than eight-minute audio recording of Daft’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo in the studio with American DJ-producer-vocalist Todd Edwards more a decade ago, while the trio were working on the track “Fragments of Time.”
The song was featured on Daft Punk’s 2013 album Random Access Memories, which is getting an expanded release in May. “The Writing of Fragments of Time” is the first release from this expanded edition and features audio on which you can hear Bangalter and Edwards (who first collaborated with Daft Punk on 2001’s “Face To Face”) working out the song’s lyrics.
This audio was taken at the Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles on Feb. 29, 2012, with a tape running for the full session.
“There are certain parts I’m getting choked up, because it’s so damn emotional just putting these three weeks into words, it’s really intense. I’ve never felt anything like this,” Edwards says toward the end of the new track.
“It’s making it forever,” Bangalter adds.
“I worked two weeks in L.A. with Daft Punk for their Random Access Memories album,” Edwards told Billboard in 2021. “I called my mom during that first week; she could hear the calm and happiness in my voice and said, ‘You need to be out there. There’s nothing for you in New Jersey. I’ll miss you when you go, but I’d feel worse if you stayed.’ That summer I packed up a truck with all my gear and drove across country to move to L.A.”
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 like the one out now. 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.
Check out “The Writing of Fragments of Time” below:
