Digital Love: Digitalism interviewed

Digital Love: Digitalism interviewed

9 December, 2008 | 3.50AM

• Written by: Ryan Keeling
• Filed under: Music News: digitalism

Digitalism have apparently played 400 gigs in the past few months.

Even if this is half true, it is a mighty testament to the popularity of a band who are currently in the final throws of an all-conquering world tour. 

Since breaking through via the 2005 electro house smash that was ‘Zdarlight’, the self-styled ‘dance act that rock’ have been darlings of the indie remix, taking hipsters The Test Icicles, Klaxons, Cut Copy and The Futureheads under their knob-twiddling wing.

We caught up with Hamburg duo Jens Moelle and Ismail Tuefecki ahead of the release of their digital remix album ‘Hands on Idealism’, to talk touring, WW2 bunkers and to ask if they are really a live band…

So the press release for your upcoming remix album ‘Hands on Idealism’ says that you have played over 400 gigs in the past few months – is this true?

The amount of gigs in the past months was so huge that we stopped counting. It really kind of feels like it’s been 400 at least! We got so used to touring that it took us a while to switch back to a ‘being home mode’, without crews and backstages and all of that.

It’s quite funny seeing your fridge empty without that catering rider. Basically, we’ve been touring our songs for more than three years now, and we hardly took any break in between.

Three years is quite a long time to be touring.  You must love it.  How has the Idealism World Tour has been up until now?

The tour has been great, and the best thing about it was that it kept on changing and evolving over the months.

We started our live shows with really a minimal setup and now have ended up bringing lots of crew with us to set up all the stuff that we’re bringing along when we play a concert. So it’s never been boring because it was always a bit different.

The reception was really good almost everywhere, and we found out that our audience is a global one rather than concentrated on a few countries.

We probably had the longest and funniest tours in the Americas, massive festivals in Europe and Australia, and got confronted with people tattooing lyrics from our songs on their arms and stalkers in Asia and all that.

We had big fun and it seemed everyone around us did too! It’s a bit sad it’s finishing now, but of course we’ll be back with more music and more action on stage!

Stalkers and tattooed lyrics - what a testament to your popularity.  From a technical standpoint, what equipment do you use for your live set up?

We use lots of samplers and synths, Isi is e-drumming on top and Jence is singing, so we’ve got a bit of everything.

This all is embedded in a customized stage that our video and light guys bring to life while we’re playing. It turned into a proper 2-man band setup with real life attitude which is big fun.

With the use of Ableton and other such software programs, what do you guys make of the debate about some live electronic acts ‘not really being live’?

The concept of playing ‘live’ has changed. Daft Punk introduced a programmed live show that they call a “live experience” rather than a concert.

It’s all about what you see and what’s been thought up for you as a punter in the crowd. That might nowadays be a man playing guitar or almost like an art exhibition when Kraftwerk play and don’t move on stage.

Everyone can then decide what he likes better – the classical live approach, the conceptual multimedia thing or a hybrid. We love keeping it live with some help from MIDI.

Do you have a preference of playing live versus DJing?

Our big love are the live shows, although we originally come from a DJ background.

We started Digitalism to write music that we could play in our DJ sets and then translated it into a live show. Now we got really into the live thing.

DJing every now and then is great too of course, as you get the chance to play some different records and try out new quick layouts and all that.

Has the tour inspired you sufficiently to start writing new material?

Definitely. We collected so many ideas, saw so many bands play, so many countries and amazing people.

Plus there’s always so many stories and moods you engage on tour. We’re full of ideas and are burning to go back into our studio.

Speaking of your studio, do you still have your space in a WW2 bunker!?

Yes, it’s timeless and isolated and we can do whatever we want to in there. Hamburg is full of these because demolishing them would mean to break down whole neighbourhoods - they’re too solid.

We might make it a bit nicer now though, like getting a new carpet and all that.

I read an interview from last year in which you mentioned you were very conscious about choosing people to work with your music. Has your attitude changed or is it a case of 100% trusting the artists you’ve chosen for the new remix album?

We didn’t get other artists to remix our songs at the beginning as we had so many ideas about them ourselves. ‘Zdarlight’ for instance was released as a trilogy (3 12”s) with only our versions.

Once our album came out and we didn’t have any time in the studio anymore and we met even more artists and bands, we opened up and got our favourites to remix our music.

We’re glad we’ve done this, because the results are amazing. But yeah, it’s no random picks, it’s a very careful choice, always.

The indie/dance crossover has been responsible for taking electronic music to much wider audiences over the few years; do you feel there is still enough creativity in the scene to maintain it over the next few years and beyond?

Now that it’s all established, the boundaries will remain very wide.

...Which leaves plenty of room for exploration.  On that note, what’s next for Digitalism?

2009. And the next chapter.

Digitalism final tour dates:

30th December - Pyramid Rock Festival - Philip Island - Australia
31st December - Rhythm & Vine - Gisborne - New-Zealand
1st January - Field Day Festival - Sydney - Australia
3rd January - Summafielddayze - Gold Coast - Australia
4th January - Summafielddayze - Perth - Australia
22nd May - Alameda Poniente - Santa Fe -Mexico City -Mexico

Digitalism’s December Top 10

Photo credit: Matt Booy

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