Daft Punk session drummer claims unreleased album exists: “I’m told they’re working on it”
The successor to ‘Random Access Memories’ was supposedly recorded and shelved in 2018
A former Daft Punk collaborator has revealed that the duo are allegedly sitting on an unreleased album that would have served as the follow-up to 2013’s ‘Random Access Memories’.
Quinn, a session drummer who worked with Daft Punk on ‘RAM’, opened up about a potential fifth album from the French duo in a recent interview with student-run media organisation, alt.news 26:46. The drummer claims that he helped the duo record an as-yet unreleased album in 2018 which is “supposedly coming out of the locker.”
In the video interview, Quinn recalls being enlisted alongside guitarist Paul Jackson Jr. to help Daft Punk record the successor to ‘Random Access Memories’. “On RAM, I was pretty much the last person to come in on the record,” he shared. “The next record [Daft Punk] were working on, I was the very first person.”
The album was apparently completed but now exists in a “limbo” according to the drummer, who recorded percussion for hits such as ‘Give Life Back to Music’, ‘Instant Crush’ and ‘Touch’.
In the interview, Quinn goes on to talk about the early songwriting and recording stages of the record: “Thomas [Bangalter] had this keyboard, and actually had a computer program, and he was just experimenting. He was just hitting things. We were literally just trying to get vibes across. He was on the beautiful mixing board in there. I’m out in the studio, I started on my weird drum set... Whatever he would give me, I would answer and try to come up with something.”
“That unnamed record, I think will be a lot of spontaneous things,” he said. “I remember playing this one thing — my piano board, the insides of a piano — I put my kick pedal on the strings and played it like a kick drum. I remember those guys really loving that. I don’t know if it’ll make the record. It was the craziest, weird-sounding things.”
He went on to talk about the possibility of the album's release: “I keep checking in. I’m told they’re working on it. It’s coming out of the locker. I asked Daft Punk permission to talk about it for another article, ’cause they’re very secretive as you know. And the greatest guys.”
Watch the full interview below.
Last April, while promoting his solo album, Thomas Bangalter spoke out about why the duo decided to call time on the project in 2021. Citing his “concerns about the rise of artificial intelligence going beyond its use in music creation,” he told BBC’s Mark Savage that “as much as I love this character, the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot.”
The following month, Daft Punk shared a 10-year anniversary reissue of RAM that included nine previously-unreleased tracks. Additionally, the duo have launched a new video series, ‘Memory Tapes’, which looks back at the making of ‘Random Access Memories’.
