Daft Punk release archival Todd Edwards collab ‘The Writing of Fragments of Time’

Daft Punk are back… sort of.

Yesterday, March 22, the duo surprise dropped a previously unreleased track set to lay down on the forthcoming reissue of ‘Random Access Memories’, a nine-track project celebrating a decade since the record’s release.

‘The Writing of Fragments of Time’ is an eight-minute track consisting of rehearsals, offcuts, and behind-the-scenes chatter between Daft Punk and garage legend Todd Edwards, who previously worked with the pair on the 2013 cut ‘Fragments of Time’.

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The track will go alongside a further 30 minutes of unreleased and archived material from the duo when released later this year on May 12.

The original track was recorded at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles in 2012, and was one of the first Daft Punk cuts to capture “human voices”. The full session was recorded on tape, later edited by sound engineer Florian Lagatta.

Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Todd Edwards explained that both he and Thomas Bangalter were recorded while writing the track. “You'll hear me laughing because Thomas came up with some really damn witty lines in it,” he said.

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“It's emotional for me - it was a natural reaction to get a big smile on my face and bring me back to that moment. The whole experience was life-changing for me, and I'm not being dramatic!”

The producer also noted that we shouldn’t “rule out” a Daft Punk reunion. “You don't know what's going to happen five years from now,” he said. “They might decide we're going to put on a tour, or maybe the time away will bring them back together.”

“The amount of people that yearn for Daft Punk to get back together to lead the way for music shows how much the world needs more Daft Punks out there.”

Listen to ‘The Writing of Fragments of Time’, directed by Cédric Hervet, below.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter