![]() Mick Guzauski (the fantastic mixing engineer) taught us a great deal about this equipment and how best to use it. Peter Franco worked with Daft Punk on their Alive tour, then headed into the studio to help record and mix Random Access Memories. ![]() They were used to smaller scale setups, so to go to a large studio with these large old consoles was a totally different approach for them. Franco recalls that, up until that point, Thomas and Guy-Manuel recorded in more conventional studio environments and that “going totally analogue created a completely different perspective of how you make an album. When asked in an interview with GQ which of the two members provided lead vocals for each track, Bangalter replied that it didn’t matter – emphasising their strength as a creative unit. The unique feel of the album was beginning to take shape, with tracks such as The Game Of Love utilising their now-ubiquitous vocoder. We had a bunch of amps out, as well as a bunch of mics in different positions… the end result heard on the final track was recorded then.” Analogue love I don’t think it was intended to be a direct homage, but it was definitely inspired by Giorgio. Peter remembers how one of the record’s standout tracks was conceived during this period: “The music that ended up being Giorgio By Moroder was created then – the guys really loved Giorgio, so at one point, we were doing some arpeggios on the Prophet-6 and a Juno-106 and we kind of started messing around with that. It was awesome, though – a great little test.” The analogue synths that were used during the sessions were impressive, from a Roland Jupiter-6 to a Sequential Circuits Prophet-6, as well as a Yamaha CS-80. The guys really got a handle on what tape was doing to their recorded music. We prepared tape for Pro Tools, so getting that conversion right was important. We decided to record on tape and experimented with different speeds. Peter remembers that “the early ideas were generated with synths and just recording music in the traditional way. Once the tour had completed, early in 2008, Daft Punk began to experiment with some initial ideas that would eventually evolve and be reshaped into the tracks that made up the record. So that was really the beginning of the analogue-only concept that carried through to Random Access Memories.” We toured with a classic Midas Heritage console. “At that time, there wasn’t really anything close to an analogue console (in the digital realm) as far as sounding good was concerned. Thomas really talked a lot about gear during that tour and at the outset we decided to utilise an analogue console to achieve a warmer sound on the tour, and not to use digital technology, because of the reason of conversion. I got to know the guys so closely during that time. “The eight shows that they’d planned eventually turned into something like 80 shows! We toured for two years, pretty much we started in 2006 and it ended at the tail end of 2007. Then we had a long chat about how much we all loved Paul Williams,” Peter remembers. When I told them I’d done Paul Williams’ front-of-house their eyes widened and they were pretty impressed. It was originally scheduled to be just eight shows, but I met Thomas and Guy-Manuel – they asked me what I’d done. He called me one day and just said: ‘I know a couple of guys who want to do a short tour, would you be up for it?’. They asked him if he knew any front-of-house engineers and he suggested me. ![]() I had done a tour with Martin Phillips, who was doing all the lighting for their videos, so they’d already asked him if he’d help design the live show. They needed someone to mix their front-of-house. “They hadn’t performed in 10 years at that point, so they were kind of looking for a crew. “I first met Daft Punk in 2005, when they were preparing their live tour,” Peter tells us. We spoke to him about his tour memories, his first encounter with ‘the robots’ and how the record’s concept developed. Joining them on the tour was engineer Peter Franco, who engineered their Grammy Award winning live album Alive 2007 and went on to work on Random Access Memories. ![]() Although initially set to be a short-term affair, the Alive tour became a near-two-year undertaking. ![]() Following their third full-length LP Human After All in 2005, the duo decided to embark on a series of live dates. ![]()
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