ABSTRACT
Electronically manipulated voices have been a part of avant-garde electronic music composition since Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge and Luciano Berio's Thema and Visage. Electronically modified vocals appear in popular music, including songs from Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto and Ghost Stories, and most notably in the music of Daft Punk's Grammy Award winning album Random Access Memories. In Random Access Memories, Daft Punk continues their musical exploration of what it means to be human in an increasingly mechanized and virtual world. The album's title—Random Access Memories—captures Daft Punk's interest in memories, referencing both random-access memory technology and the human experience. Berio's compositions, which were prepared in the Studio di fonologia musicale in Milan, Italy, likewise depend on a blending of both types of techniques and are based on recordings of a human voice—that of Cathy Berberian, his wife at that time.
