By Stephen CarlickNext week, the wait will be over for Daft Punk's insanely anticipated Random Access Memories. As you might know, the album is rife with collaborators, but that doesn't mean they've let their guests — however formidable — run the show. As disco legend Giorgio Moroder has pointed out, the notably perfectionist Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo didn't even let him play the synthesizer on the album's third track, "Giorgio by Moroder."
"They did not let me get involved at all," a cheery Moroder tells Exclaim! over the phone from Los Angeles. "Thomas asked me if I wanted to tell the story of my life. Then they would know what to do with it. We got down in the studio in Paris, and I was just talking, talking."
The results on "Giorgio by Moroder" are a spoken autobiographical account of Moroder's childhood and finding the synthesizer, which comprise the bulk of the nine-minute track.
"I was thinking, 'Hmm, what is he going to do with this?' I thought he may take some words, or put some effects in. I didn't have any idea. Then, six months ago, I was in Paris working in the same studio where they were working, and I asked their engineer, 'So how is the song coming?' He said, 'Oh, it's great.' I said, 'Can you tell me what it is?' 'No way, no way.' He didn't tell me anything. So, I was quite surprised the way the whole thing turned out."
Asked about the track's synth parts and whether they resembled those he wrote, Moroder is humble.
"Well, when you have a bass line going, like, 'deddle-deddle-deddle-deddle-deddle-[pause-]deddle,' whatever you do, it sounds... I'm not saying similar [to me, but] in that style. It reminds you of [Donna Summer's] 'I Feel Love,' right? It's a great line, and yeah, it reminds me, in a sense, of the bass line in the style of 'I Feel Love.'"
Moroder feels no shame at all in playing a bit part on Random Access Memories, either.
"I just know that whatever they do, it's perfection," he says, and he's "quite happy" to have music fans reminded of his important contribution. "I got the Google alerts, where you read about you, and for the last several years, I have one or two alerts a week or more, but now, with the song with Daft Punk, it's really crazy. I probably did 50 interviews in the last three or four weeks. It's nice, and especially what Thomas is writing and telling in interviews, it's quite nice to hear all that stuff."
Random Access Memories is set to drop May 21 via Columbia Records imprint Daft Life Limited. You can currently stream the album here on iTunes.
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