Comprised of Jence and Isi, German duo Digitalism formed when two Hamburg natives bonded over their mutual love of vinyl over a decade ago. While indulging fans around the globe with both live and DJ sets over the years, Digitalism has also managed to release two defining albums (Idealism & I Love You Dude), with another EP fresh off the press. The pair has remixed esteemed artists such as Depeche Mode, The Presets, and Cut Copy, released on labels such as OWSLA and Toolroom Records, and even arranged their own compilation for the famed DJ Kicks series last year.

“The more music you make, the more your sound crystallises. If you’re not sure where you want to go, just wait a few songs, and you can tell where you want to go.”

Of course it sounds like something we would be predestined for, right? One day we hung out with Trevor Horn in his house, and we started talking about soundtracks. He said: “Don’t do it. It’s too much work.” If you’re to score an industry film, it’s probably too much editing and micro details you have to fight with. But we reckon if you can do it the Morricone/Leone way — where they made the music first and would then film the scenes with the music running in the background, giving the composer total freedom, it might be a nice thing. So far we like scoring our own lives.

It’s grown up a lot since we started. The reason why we formed Digitalism was to supply ourselves with music for our DJ sets, but after a while we ended up being producers and songwriters, basically album artists, which was something that we hadn’t planned. We also learned everything in a DIY way and we just finished school, so we had no money and no clue how to do all these things. Now after a few (actually, quite a lot) years we are more certain about our sound and what we want to express than ever before. Sounds might have evolved you know, but the very essence of “Digitalism” is in everything that we write and release – more than ever — there’s some kind of signature thing in all of this that crystallized over the last decade.

While you are creating music, you think about songs will come across live?

We tried to keep that in mind when we made the second album, but we forgot… So basically, no. But if we listen to new material and we get up in the studio and heads start banging or feet tapping, then at least we know we really want to perform that stuff live.

Did you have an overall goal in mind when creating your debut album “Idealism”? Is there any message, meaning or theme behind the project?

We thought about “Idealism” as about a book or a movie with a story from the beginning to the end, with a homogenic content that’s got a “Digitalism signature”, split into different chapters (the songs). So, it was never supposed to be just a compilation of tracks. Also, we didn’t want to produce an album around the singles that we’ve released so far. We’ve been listening to lots of soundtracks over the years, and very often we think in movies or have scenes and images on our minds when we compose our music. We love traveling and discovering new worlds. F.i. there are stops in Cairo (Digitalism In Cairo), parties on a cast-away spot of the earth (Pogo) or adventures on Jupiter (Jupiter Room). It’s all about those things we experience everyday, but that requires you to be open-minded. We want to stimulate emotions with our music, let people dream, let them dance to it as well as listen to it on the radio or on the road. We’d like to encourage people to head towards their aims and ideals. Staying average or in routines keeps you from seeing the “Big Picture”. We want to euphorize. People should have big visions.

Speaking of your studio, I’ve heard a lot about it and I know it’s an actual WWII bunker with no windows. How does this setting affect your creativity and do you think you’ll still hold it in the future?

For us it’s the birthplace of our music. A bit like an underground club with concrete walls and no natural light, in our bunker studio we can do whatever we want, and whenever. It could be any time of the day or an season outside. When you switch off the lights, it’s pitch black. That void then is very inspiring. It’s more fun to create stuff when it’s not too busy around you already. The funny thing is — even in London we ended up in an underground studio space. Who knows what kind of music we would make if we had a cabin in the woods… Bunkers and basements are the way to go for us. You get tired from it after 15 years, but it’s something to keep for sure.

Do your DJ and live performance sets influence each other? If you use your DJ sets to test out new original music, are there any particular tracks that you’d cite?

Our live sets are not directly influenced by our DJ sets, but from DJ sets in general. We always try to create a certain narrative with it that includes peaks and troughs, to grab people and take them on a journey. When you feel comfortable with one bit, it might flip entirely the next minute into something else. It’s something we learned from our roots as DJs. There’s been some influences from our live sets on our second album. While ‘Idealism’ was mostly based around 130 BPM, we found out that when we play live, some of the stuff could do with a little speed boost. Some tracks on our second album were much faster (or slower), we opened that spectrum.

How has touring affected your lives? Do you find it harder to create new material with such a heavy schedule?

Usually when we’re on tour we don’t really produce, which is still a bit old-school probably. We love making music in our studio and not with headphones at an airport gate, but with our touring schedule we had to adapt of course. Some of our last remixes were done on tour (we did one for Stimming for instance, and it was recorded with our live setup during a soundcheck in Washington), and many of the new tracks for the DJ-Kicks that’s gonna be out this summer were made in California this year. Touring is very inspiring for us, we just need a quiet minute to sit down and channel it into music. It can be tough sometimes, but all the fun and excitement that you encounter just wipe out any exhaustion usually.