#vessel sf

[murderpalace]

Tickets are on sell now for Norman Doray at Vessel Night Club in San Francisco. I'll be spinning a guest supporting set that evening starting at 10PM. Grab your tickets and join me and my friends for a spectacular night of music, love and alcohol!

[murderpalace]

Looking forward to reuniting with my friends at Vessel SF (vesselsf) on August 15 when I join Ron Resser and Norman Doray on Friday night.

[struongphoto]

The Chainsmokers @ Vessel SF

[amberreyn]

[magnifi-live]

VESSEL RADIO

[holymountain-blog]

Digitalism @ Vessel SF

[8tracks]

Digitalism Interviewed

Digitalism are typically jet lagged in California. Not this time. Before their DJ set at San Francisco’s VesseI I sat down with Isi and Jens, fresh-faced from a few days of American winter sunshine, to talk about their German roots and evolving style.

Get their latest record, I Love You, Dude and check out Digitalism's 8tracks mix.

Digitalism's Best of 2011 from digitalism on 8tracks.

The press that I’ve read about you makes a big deal of the fact that you are not the traditional German minimalists and your music is more like French house. I wonder what that’s like to be classified in that way? How would you classify your music?   Jens: We definitely are not minimal. Because we’re from Hamburg we’re not involved with any Berlin or Frankfurt sounds. We don’t hang out with those guys all the time. And Hamburg is traditionally a very independent city. And everyone does their own stuff there. So we don’t really hang out with everyone all the time and do collaborations. We have a studio in a WWII bunker and it’s completely isolated from everything and we just do our stuff there. We’re unbiased. Minimal is really boring for us. We started as a band because we wanted something exciting for us to play for our DJ sets. We couldn’t find it and thought we could do it better so we just started making music. French house influenced us because we worked in a record shop and used to sell all those legendary French house records at the end of the 90s. Our sound can be a bit British, indie, British 80s. Others say we sound Nordic because we’re atmospheric and cinematic. We love soundtracks and riff-heavy electronic music. It’s interesting that there’s such a focus on the geography when where you actually live is a place where there are electronic influences. Isi: As Jens mentioned Hamburg is quite independent. We have a small electronic scene but it’s really really commercial. Those artists are really famous in Germany, Switzerland, Austria where people speak German, but that’s it. Jens: We’re kind of outsiders. We started as outsiders, but now people are more into us in our own city which is important and good. But it took them a long time. Hamburg’s official motto is “Gateway to the World” because there’s a huge seaport, ships arriving from all over the world. That’s probably what inspired us as well. It’s a good city. To me your 2011 album I Love You, Dude seemed sunnier than your 2007 album, Idealism. Jens: Yeah that’s what we thought as well in retrospect. We didn’t set out to make it sunnier but it ended up that way. We don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we produced this more in the daytime. The first one was produced late, until 6am. The new one is a bit more down to earth. We also thought if the first was more spaced out and the second was on the ground, maybe the third will be really underground. The latest album came out in June 2011, so what are you doing now? Isi: We had a really good year last year. In six months we played 90 shows live. This year we took three months off. Now we’re just DJing. Then we’re starting our live show again - a lot of festivals in the meantime. While we are here we are trying to produce new songs and enjoy the Cali sun. Jens: When we finished the last album we still felt like we wanted to do more music and now we have more time. This is the part of the tour that started last year for the album, so now we want to produce new music. Are you able to produce new music on the road? Isi: We don’t like it but we get used to it. When we have time off and we’re DJing we’re trying new material out and see how the audience reacts. It’s cool that people are sometimes realize that we’re playing something new, or they don’t realize it and the reaction is really great. It’s important sometimes to DJ to see how the stuff is working. What does feel like when you’re on stage and everything is going right and everyone is loving it? Can you describe what it feels like to be a rock star? Isi: I’m honest, I don’t think about it. Because for me it’s really important of course that I’m DJing and can see that people are enjoying it and smiling and sweating and having a lot of fun. They’re going out with a good feeling, even if they’re having problems. For me it’s more important to make people excited and put the “rock star” to the side. And DJing for our audience - and this is the key for everything. Jens: It’s an amazing feeling because you can see that you’ve just made loads of people really happy. It’s probably the same as finding the perfect present for your girlfriend or something for Christmas and she’s totally happy. And that’s something really nice.

[gradybrannan]

Chuckie @ Vessel SF