Digitalism Interview

Digitalism. What can we say. They’re awesome. We catch up with the all genre spanning duo to find out more about their latest release ‘Lift’ and when we’ll next be seeing them in Australia. Digitalism, made up of Jens “Jence” Moelle and ?smail “Isi” Tüfekçi, started making tunes back in 2004 and are now one of the most respected acts in Electronice music, so lets find out what they had to say about working with Kitsune and what to check out when visiting Hamburg…aside from the Reeperbahn.

Hi Jens, Ismail, how are you?
Good thanks!

Where are you in the world right now?
We just got back to Europe yesterday after a few weeks of touring in the US and Canada. We’re almost Paris-bound now, where we’re gonna play this Saturday.

So you released ‘Lift’ with Kitsune, what do you like about this label, and why did you decide to return to them for this release?
We have a lot of history with Kitsuné. They were the first label to pick us up back then, almost ten years ago now, and they released our first 12″s. We’ve been working together even before we released our first album, so it’s always been a bit of a family-atmosphere with them. We were free to decide who we’d release ‘Lift’ with, and since we just introduced new artwork and concept, it was a very logical step for us to do it with Kitsuné. This is quite an important release for us, and we wanted to make a statement with this. If you have a strong artistic vision and pair your music with a lot of other artistic fields, then there is probably no one better out there than Kitsuné. It feels good to be back with them for this.

The ‘Idealism’ album was so huge… I still listen to it now, what do you think it was that made this album so successful? I would go as far as to say it was one of the musical lynchpins of 2007.
Wow, thank you. Well it is probably its raw energy for one, and the fact that it sounded very unique in its context, compared to anything else that was out there. We started making music because we couldn’t find the tracks that we really wanted to play as DJs, so we made it ourselves. What you could hear on ‘Idealism’ was exactly what we wanted to play in our sets. It wasn’t anywhere out there, you could only find it on ‘Idealism’. Thirdly, our music has always been very riff-driven and emotional, and somehow song-based, which probably made it easy to cross-over.

My favourite track of yours is ‘Pogo’, how do you feel about this track, and what was the influence behind the track?
We had an instrumental version in a drawer for a long time already until we decided to make it a full song and add it to the album. It used to be something deep and housey in the beginning. By the time we started writing on it, we’d been touring around the globe heavily already. The song is about that excitement you get thinking about someone, but at the same time that person is somewhere far away, which makes it romantic and sad at the same time.

How’s your summer been? What was a highlight for you?
It was great! We did a lot of gigs both in Europe and North America. The best thing about it must have been our stripped-down live US tour in May. We played small, intimate venues and only brought very little production so we could travel without a tour bus this time, as an experiment. It turned out really well – at the end we found out that, even in the electronic music world, you can still rock a show without a truck full of pyro effects and all that. Even the little things we brought along died after one or two plane rides, we were left with literally nothing. But it was great.

You guys are from Hamburg, I absolutely love it there, especially all the awesome street art, what three things would you tell our readers to do whilst visiting the city?
First of all, come in late May, beginning of June. It’s the best time. Sun sets really late, and the weather is usually good, so you want to hang out outside around the central lake and have a BBQ. You’ll also want to see the famous Reeperbahn, the main red light district road; like a mini-Vegas, where everyone ends up at some point. Even the Beatles started out there. And you shouldn’t miss a peak at the harbour, maybe after partying, at the fish market. There’s a lot of things to do and discover; this would only be a start.

What’s your favourite club in Hamburg?
We really like ‘Ego’ (at Talstrasse, St. Pauli), it’s run by the DIY guys. It’s quite a safe bet to go, whatever date it is. They have good bookings and the vibe is just right. But usually we don’t go out in our hometown so much… We do it all the time on tour! So when we’re home, we usually take it easy.

Who is on repeat on your iPod at the moment (old or new, doesn’t matter)?
New Arcade Fire, some Queens Of The Stone Age, our own new ideas, Jackson and His Computer Band.

You guys have been going for a fair few years now, how do you feel Digitalism has changed since its inception?
You know, that’s a tough one. We know we have changed a bit as in being grown-up a bit more now. When we started, we were only 20-ish. We’ve learned a lot over the years, and you can probably hear that in our music and see it on stage, too. But it’s funny, because on the other hand we’ve not really changed one bit. There’s the signature ‘Digitalism sound’, which carries through all of our music up to now, and we’ve always tried to stay out of any cliques or trends, which is why – again – we might be new to a lot of people, because there’s a lot of new fans of electronic music out there, and they simply started following the whole thing after we released our last albums. So, even though we’ve been around for ages now, we are at the same starting point again, which is really cool.

You’ll be playing at the Chinese Laundry Halloween Garden Party in October alongside Booka Shade, what can Sydney expect from your set?
New music!

Are you looking forward to seeing Booka Shade? Do you guys know each other, what’s your relationship like?
Of course we know each other, although only a little bit. The last time we played the same stage was in Scotland at T-In-The-Park (or I Love Techno in Belgium?) a few years ago. It’ll be good to see the guys again. We have some of their records on 12″.

Being a duo, are there ever any conflicts between you when you’re creating music?
Of course we have our arguments sometimes – which is something you can’t avoid if you see each other almost every day for ten years! But when it comes to making music, we’re a very good team, where each one of us has his position and role, and we work pretty complementary. It’s like Yin and Yang.

Do you guys have any studio rituals, or anything you have to have when you’re in the studio? (a constant stream of tea, a studio mascot, cigarettes etc)
Not really. We did the first album almost entirely at night, the second one during the day, and since then we’re not sure what we prefer. At the moment we go to a lot of different studios around the world while we’re on tour, so it’s not easy to establish and rituals or routine. But a good coffee is always great, for sure.

What’s the coolest festival you’ve ever played at?
Last year we played at Paradiso Festival in the state of Washington (US), which is located at the rim of a massive canyon in the middle of the prairie. It’s so breath-taking that we considered staying another week there after we were finished. Couldn’t do it though because of our schedule, went back to Seattle instead and took some pictures of where they shot Twin Peaks.

What have you got lined up for the rest of 2013?
The rest of the year for us is about DJing – we’ll come to Japan and Australia for a little tour and then play in Europe pretty much until Christmas. ‘Lift’ is being released, like, now on Kitsuné, and we already have big things in the pipeline. We don’t want to talk too much about it though – you guys should enjoy ‘Lift’ for now!

By Hannah Shakir