Daft Punk session drummer says band have unreleased fifth album “in limbo”

Daft Punk are sitting on an unreleased fifth album, according to former collaborator and session drummer Quinn.

• READ MORE: Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter have been making music together 

Quinn worked with the French electronic duo on their final album, 2013’s Random Access Memories, and discusses his experience working with the helmeted musicians in an interview with the student-run media organisation alt.news 26:46.

In the interview, he mentions that Daft Punk began working on what would have been their fifth album in 2018, and he was also supposed to be involved with it. However, the project remains “in limbo”.

“On RAM, I was pretty much the last person to come in on the record,” he says (per Consequence Of Sound). “The next record [Daft Punk] were working on, I was the very first person.”

Quinn also claims he had seen Daft Punk at the beginning stages of the songwriting and recording process. “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 continues. “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.”

Quinn adds that he “keeps checking in” on the album in case it’ll ever see the light of day. “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.”

The duo parted ways in 2021 and Thomas Bangalter has since admitted that he was “relieved” over the way that the band ended.

“The question I ask more myself is why we did end it rather than how it could last for so long,” he said. “It’s a lot like a story or mini saga – sometimes there’s a TV show that has a special place in people’s hearts and it keeps that place, and it runs for one, two, three, four, five, sometimes 10 seasons.

“There’s a moment where it ends and I think it’s actually interesting to have this opportunity to start, have the middle and to end it… [I was] relieved and happy to look back and say: ‘OK, we didn’t mess it up too much.’”