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Music

Digitalism Talk Duality, the Death of Albums, and the Best Gifts They’ve Gotten on Tour

'Mirage,' the German dance duo's first project in five years, marks a welcome return to their indie-electro roots.

Photo courtesy Digitalism

It’s a bright Friday afternoon in LA, just hours before indie-electronic stalwarts Digitalism take the stage at El Rey theater for the final stop of their US tour behind their third studio album, Mirage. One half of the German duo, İsmail Tüfekçi, is already out on the floor as the lighting team tightens up the set’s visuals; their manager assures me Jence Moelle will be down in a second—he’s just throwing some pants on after trying to nap in the green room. He emerges minutes later, popping an immunity booster after a warm hello. He’ll need it: After performing ten days of back-to-back shows (sometimes two sets in a single night), they’ll charge into tours of Mexico, Australia, all over Europe, and Japan that will keep them on the road through the end of November. At the mention of Mirage, however, they beam.

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“It’s a good package,” Tüfekçi says, his eyes on the stage. The effort didn't stop at writing music, but involved crafting a hypnotizing light show and visual presentation, a studio schedule with no room for dilly dallying, and thousands of miles, as the album was recorded, mixed, and mastered between LA, Paris, Hamburg, and Moelle’s new home, London.

For Digitalism, Mirage (out now via PIAS) is a reclaiming of the identity they felt they had lost after years of one-off singles and collaborations, tracks which they are still proud of, but that Moelle says were, in hindsight, “not as edgy as we usually like.” “We didn’t even know if we were to make an album how it would sound like,” he continues. “We didn’t have any direction, nothing.”

Mirage is the duo’s first shot at making a full length album in five years, a task Moelle explains was something he and Tüfekçi “had to do” to soundtrack their world travels, to repaint snapshots of their experiences, and to convey their emotional memories, which at times proved to be more complex than either of them anticipated.

“It’s quite abstract,” Moelle says. “Once we do sit down and have a certain thing in mind, it ends up somewhere completely different. I think ‘Indigo Skies’ was originally about summer nights, you know, when it’s like the sky just looks like a nice tropical ocean and it’s 11 PM and it’s really warm outside. But now it’s actually about something completely different.”

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That track may have a dual meaning, but when it comes to others, like the frenetically uplifting single “Go Time,” the duo is still working on finding one single interpretation; in a recent interview, they admitted they weren’t quite sure what some of the lyrics were about, they just agreed that’s what the words had to be; weeks later, the two laughingly admit that they still don’t really know.

Moelle also admits that from a marketing standpoint, it was “quite stupid” for them to even release an album at when the medium, particularly for dance and electronic acts, feels increasingly obsolete—and that’s coming from a guy who met his band mate in a record shop.

“We like albums, but I don’t know if anyone needs them,” he says. “A lot of times not everything on an album is equally great, so you can just as well get rid of the not so good tracks… [albums] only exist because back then, after a couple single releases, record labels would just put everything on one album. So it’s not like albums have been out there since Christ or something.”

“But you can’t say, ‘this is right’ or ‘this is wrong,’” Tüfekçi adds. “Because it is how it is and you can’t even change it, but that means you have to be much more creative than usual, you know, how you are gonna release it, or on which platform.”

Moelle hypothesizes that in the future, artists will have to put out albums that are a single, hour-long track if they want listeners to digest an entire concept. Or, because our attention spans seem to be shrinking by the day, songs will be limited to being 20 or 30 seconds long. “One band just recorded silence and told their fans ‘anytime you want peace and quiet, put our music on,’” he says.“Then they get royalties.”

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So how does an act like Digitalism adapt to the impending demise of albums? “Not at all,” says Moelle with a laugh. “We just made an album.” He chuckles momentarily, revealing he’s aware of how that decision could prove to be less than lucrative, but moves forward with a slight smile, and the confidence of an artist who knows they’ve put out their best work. “We’re very old school, but we had to do it,” he says. “We’re not nervous because we like it, and that’s what counts for us.”

If that feels a touch anachronistic, their passionate international fanbase says otherwise: Fans regularly cross national borders to see them perform, flying from Italy to London, or from Puerto Rico to Boston. “Two or three guys came over from Mexico,” Tüfekçi says about their show in San Francisco two nights before. “The funny part is we’re playing Saturday in Mexico,” he laughs.

The tight pop constructions and tech-house bones of Mirage promises their loyalty won’t be fading anytime soon: The duo shares stories of fans crying upon meeting them, creating their own DIY merch as tribute, and gifts from more than a decade of touring—“People bake cakes, or they give you paintings,” Moelle says, going on to describe a personalized laundry bag given to him years ago that he calls “brilliant” and “really cute,” and says he still uses to this day. “They wait for you at the airport. Especially if you’re in Japan, you get a lot of presents,” Tüfekçi adds. “If you travel and are DJ-ing and playing live, you realize that you have to give your fans something back. It’s like you’re collecting some movies or books…and it’s like we realized we needed a third episode of the book.”

If the album, and its accompanying hype, proved worth the five year wait, Tüfekçi promises their fourth project will require less patience. “We had so much stuff that didn’t end up on the album,” he reveals, stopping just before ruining what he calls a surprise. “If you have your creative process, you shouldn’t stop. You should do more.”

Artemis Thomas-Hansard is a writer based in LA. Follow her on Twitter.