Digitalism's Isi Tüfekçi: The New Gay Interview

Though Digitalism's Isi (left) is much taller, little Jens provides the big voice. (photo from MySpace.]

Digitalism Plays Tonight, 3/24, at DC9. Doors open at 9.

Two weeks ago, I posted about Justice's concert and how boring it was. Soon after, a TNG reader with sources at the 9:30 Club confirmed the abundantly obvious: Justice's show was pre-recorded, and the French duo's time on stage was little more than an hour of aimless buttom-pushing. So imagine my excitement last week when Michael posted on Digitalism, a German dance-rock band that —gasp— plays actual instruments onstage and actually puts effort into their live show.

I've mentioned before that my Boohmauer-style vocal delivery doesn't mesh well with people who have accents, and factor in a crackly phone connection and its a wonder that me and Isi Tüfekçi, the band's Turkish born DJ and music producer (Jens Moelle provides vocals), could communicate at all. Still, he believes that electronic music can still be interesting to watch, and that's enough to get me out to DC9 tonight to watch him.

Full interview beneath the fold.


The New Gay Zack: Your tour schedule differentiates between your live shows and your DJ sets. Why do you make this distinction?

Isi Tüfekçi: They're completely different. The live show is us presenting our album, and when we DJ we present different music. It's important that when we do the live show it's different than the album, material-wise, adding more melodies, its important.

TNG: What are your live shows like?

IT: I play on drums, Jens is singing. We have a lot of synthesizers on stage, and we have amazing stage design by a German guy. Behind us is some visuals. In front is 45 minutes, more than hour, of Digitalism's world and that world for us is important.

TNG: Why is it so important?

IT: When you hear the album at home, and you hear the same tracks in the same way, I think you can get really fast bored, or you say 'it's fine, I know the album like this.' But Jens and me like to do everything different. We see the live show like a second album, its important to create it differently than the album.

TNG: I saw Justice play last week and it was basically just a light show set to the band's pre-recorded music. Do you think dance acts like this have an obligation to let their audiences know what kind of performance they're seeing? ?

IT: It's really important to announce if it's a DJ set or live show. Sometimes a promoter can make a mistake because of a miscommunication but its really important to say that it’s a Digitalism DJ set or live set, that's the most important thing, I think. I different people are coming to your concert than your DJ set, its important to announce it. It's like, when you give a concert your real fan base is coming, and of course some new people just to hear the music. A DJ set is only some fans.

TNG: So many dance bands are just all, excuse the pun, digital sounds. How do you decide what gets played on a computer vs. what gets played on actual live instruments?

IT: The computer there. We're two guys on stage, we can't play every instrument. It takes us a long process to see what which way we want play live, but we found a solution. We like to do it half machine, half live, it's like half a live band, and the rest is coming from synthesizers and from samplers. Jens and me, both of us on stage, we are Digitalism. Of course you can create a band and make the whole live set more rock and roll, but we just try to stay two people. We present it really god show, we're between crossover and electronic music.

TNG: It seems like there's a big wave of popular dance/rock bands around right now. What separates you from the rest of the pack?

IT: There are some people really getting hyped on both sides, they are really big. I think sometimes it's not only the hype, you have to show the quality of the music, that's really important. Right now I have a feeling that we're in a really quick time, everyone is growing faster up, we need good quality music.

TNG: Is it true that its really hard to get American audiences to dance?

IT: I'm happy with American crowds, every city you feel the electronic music is growing up. Our first concert was in Houston, and when we came back to Houston people started to dance on stage and the security guards couldn't do anything. There were 150 people on stage starting to dance, what do you do? You see that electronic music is there, its coming, its growing up in America, the people feel as well that something has to change. America is hungry for trance and hip-hop. Compare that to Kanye West's samples from Daft Punk, it's a sign that some big hip-hop producers are starting to put in their songs electronic elements. Its getting bigger and bigger, people all over the world are waiting for that, it's a bit different. For example, before the '70s, people didn't listen to rock because it wasn't acceptable, but after ten years they accept that music, and then people were liking rock music in the '70s, you can compare it to that. I hope you understand what I mean.

TNG: I do, I think. You've actually answered all my questions, thank you for talking to me. I hope you have a good show, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

IT: It's our first time in Washington. I hope we have time, I wanna see the president's house. Sometimes it's really important to see stuff from the culture. It's good to see that every city has a music culture, I'm really excited to play Washington. I don't care if it's sold out or not. It's good to have a sold out venue, but its also important that the people there enjoy it and have a lot of fun, that's more important than everything.