Digitalism's debut rescues e-music by bringing the new
The days when electronic dance music seemed to produce groundbreaking records a few times a year seem long gone. The heyday of Underworld, the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Moby, Leftfield, and Orbital has so far been left in the 1990s. What these artists had in common was a desire to create the epic, big album - to prove that they could sketch the highs and lows of human emotion with digital music in the same way rockers did with guitars. After the millennium, dance music's bubble burst, disintegrating into entrenched genre tribes (trance vs. house) and contrived trends (electroclash's failed new wave revival). There has been quality e-music: Artists such as Bent, Sasha, Junkie XL, Hybrid, Dennis Ferrer, Goldfrapp, and Spooky hit us with heavyweight long players in recent times. But their albums have been more about refinement than advancement. E-music has yet to blow minds in the new millennium. And that, in our opinion, is the genre's inherent duty: to continue to move popular music beyond its mid-century Elvis pose - to reinvent the new.
With Idealism, the debut from German duo Digitalism, we've been offered something ardently fresh, and perhaps something that will return e-music to its '90s heights. The 15-track record, due June 19, is part Daft Punk, part '80s punk, and all-killer, no-filler. While dance-rock (Tommie Sunshine) and dance-punk (LCD Soundsystem) are the fads du jour that have taken electroclash's sorry place behind the velvet rope, Idealism feels organic and fluid, a result of heartfelt chemistry rather than marketing alchemy. More importantly, it delivers the goods - crunchy, loopy, robotic grooves the likes of which haven't been seen since Homework; true-punk irreverence (not to mention guitars and vocals); and a range of emotion, from wistful yearning to thrashing abandon. Idealism rides on four-on-the-floor kick drums and break-beat syncopation.
On "I want I want," the Hamburg team of Ismail "Isi" Tuefekci and Jens Moelle step up like it's '79 at CBGB, kicking out live-sounding drums, a porn bassline, and wiry, metallic guitar licks. The underlying rhythm, meanwhile, is a series of stripped-down percussion - pure floor candy.
"We love the punk attitude in general," says Moelle, 25, "being silly or rude or disrespectful."
Similarly on "Pogo," an homage to the vertical punk dancing of yore, Digitalism unleashes relentless hi-hats, Joy Division-esque guitar twang, and yes, lo-fi drum-machine claps. What's surprising about the music is the duo's high-flying, Brit-style vocals, which adorn much of the album. "Woh-oh, there's something in the air," they sing on "Pogo." With "Anything New," the two reinvent digital punk-funk while belting out the Digitalism manifesto: "Everything is anything new/The future is a thing that's a danger to you/Even the minimum is maximum/Gold never will become platinum." (The chorus asks, "Is anything new/Is anything new.")
At times the voice-box effects can seem overdone ("Moonlight" is straight out of the Daft Punk playbook), but the blend of analog exotica and future-forward synths is mesmerizing. "Home Zone" is the hottest German break-beat track since "Trans-Europe Express." Put on your tracksuit and white gloves. "Digitalism in Cairo," meanwhile, is an infernal redux of The Cure's "Fire in Cairo" that builds like a monster wave at Peahi. "The Pulse" and "Jupitor Room" are pure big-room jackers - unrelenting siren calls to get down, get funky.
The duo met about seven years ago when Moelle was working at a Hamburg record store and Tuefekci was purchasing tunes for his DJ sets. The two paired up for gigs, but found the house and "progressive" of the time was staid. "We thought that if we couldn't find music that really kicks us, we'd have to make it ourselves," Moelle says.
Digitalism makes records the old-fashioned way: with a 900 mhz PC and retro Roland analog keyboards. By now you might be saying that the elements described herein don't really make for a genre-busting, decade-defining, all-time album. You could be right. But Digitalism really is more than the sum of these parts. Sure, acts such as MSTRKRFT, A Touch of Class, and Soulwax have done a good job of incorporating similar sounds. But Tuefekci and Moelle, DJs and remixers from the fauxhawk era, have a chemistry that whips new wave revival, house loops, and a punk attitude into something entirely revitalizing.
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