Digitalism’s pulsating, sing-along electro, that you can jack and sweat to whilst embracing strangers, was the soundtrack to the Electronic Beats Festival in Zagreb last weekend. The two boys from Hamburg put on an explosive and spectacular show and it was a true honour to have them grace the stage. They were so nice in fact, that they gave up their time to sit down and give us their opinion on a few subjects we tossed their way. Read on to find out what Digitalism think on…
The difference between Idealism and I love you dude.
I think, it’s always the same with the second album – you don’t really know what to do, so we just started DJ’ing again, we stopped playing live just like we did on the first album. We started Dj’ing, and we started making some tools and tracks, that we can DJ and try out and then we had a couple of favorites – we turned them into proper songs and they turned out to be a bit different than on the first album. The first album we made it before we went out into the world and played everywhere, and played live and do lots of touring. Before we were just at home. We made music and that’s it. That’s why the album is probably influenced by all the live gigs and all the different places around the world. It sounds a bit more like it was written by a band then, the first album is more like some producer stuff and thats due to all the touring, that we’ve done. And the title? We just wanted to do something silly. We came up with it in Australia and just wanted to drop this message to the world but it hasn’t got any context.
On Digitalism becoming a band
No, we don’t wanna be a band. OK, we’re a two man band but we’re not a classic band. We’ve got a drummer with us now, but that makes sense, because we use a lot of live drum recordings, samples and everything in our music anyway. We don’t wanna be like what Chemical Brothers do on stage, just behind the decks, with all the equipment and stuff, but not really interacting with the audience. We wanted some more action, so we added the drummer, but I don’t think we’re gonna have a full band, because that’s not our identity. We want to stay kind of techno mixed with live stuff or whatever. I think, that’s our perfect concept at the moment.
On the growing music piracy in the world
Probably what everyone thinks. It’s good because everyone can get everything, if he wants to, but then of course it’s not so good for the industry. But if you use it in a clever way, you can give people something for free and then in exchange you get an email adress or they buy something, they get some bonus or whatever. It’s good, if people share everything, then more people know about you. So there’s always up and down side. I really dont mind downloads and I know that people, that really like music, including me, at the end they’re gonna… I always buy the albums, if I really like to have it complete with artwork. It’s so much nicer for the collection.
Have you ever downloaded something illegal?
I might have (laughs).
Your last music love, something you would recommend to people?
We’ve just done a remix for Who Made Who, they’re really good band from Scandinavia, and they’re gonna drop a new album on Kompakt. They’ve already released one album this year, but they were so creative, they have a second one coming and we remixed their next single. And they are… I mean, they’re not new, they’ve been around for years but its just the stuff, that they are doing is just magic, it’s just really nice. There’s tons of other things around, but that’s the first thing that I was thinking of.
Who you are looking forward hearing in Zagreb?
Oh, basically everyone, but I have to say I really wanna see Roisin Murphy, even if she is only DJing. By the time we started buying vinyl and everything, that was around the time that Moloko was big and our friend used to produce stuff, so it’s a bit history with Roisin Murphy. I’m really looking forward seeing her tonight.
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