Digitalism

Digitalism hail from Hamburg. Isi, the German born son of Turkish immigrants, met Jens, the child of a liberal family, at the city’s Underground Solution record store. They soon bonded over their shared love of dance and rock records. When the store’s owner, Ollie Grabowski, began casting around for a couple of fresh, young DJs to play at party, he suggested that Isi and Jens team up.

As the duo’s DJing reputation took off, so the harder they worked to find obscure, unheard records to animate their crowds. In 2001, the price of CD writers dropped sufficiently to allow the boys to burn their own records. "We started with some edits," says Jens, "just for our DJ sets." The first was a version of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. This eventually found its way onto vinyl and sold well, marking Digitalism out as electronic producers who could cross over into the rock camp. Its success also prompted the boys to put out another release. On their second record, they also included an original composition. The jagged, makeshift track, with its scrappy vocal hook (‘I Have An Idea That You Are Here, I Have The Idea That You Were Near’), called Idealistic. The record was re-pressed, allowing everyone from Errol Alkan to Pete Tong to pick up a copy, yet it was Gildas Loaec from Kitsuné in Paris who eventually contacted the duo with a serious label deal.

"I knew the record had done well," says Isi, "I was distributing it, after all. Yet I was really happy to get the call from Gildas. We were the first album artist signing to Kitsune."

Yet the boys still love earthbound rock ‘n’ roll. Their reinterpretation of The Cure’s Fire In Cairo, entitled Digitalism in Cairo, was one 2006’s cult re-edits. They managed to clear this version for their album, setting the band’s album apart from the usual 4/4 club bound albums. Listen to a track like Pogo or Apollo-Gize from their new LP. Their loose, heavily distorted, rough grooves and blankly delivered lyrics owe as much to Joy Division or The Associates as they do to Daft Punk and their contemporaries.

The boys still record in a bunker. The building wouldn't look out of place in a dystopian film like 1984. Its thick concrete walls, blast doors and cell-like atmosphere suits the duo perfectly. "We drink something, we have fun," says Isi, "we don’t have any daylight, any distractions; I think maybe our sound come from the bunker atmosphere."

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