German producer and DJ duo, Digitalism have dropped their highly anticipated, futuristic, fourth studio album JPEG on etcetc Music, following the recent announcement of their European ‘JPEG 2020’ tour.
Projecting a true reflection of Digitalism, JPEG is an explosion of colours through twelve tracks that embody sweet melancholia, atmospheric soundtracks and epic melodies. With an origin of over fifteen years, Digitalism consider this album to represent the way they see their artistic output – “Our songs are paintings, just with music. Like still-lives. We draw pictures of special moments we experience in our lives, reproduce mental snapshots,” explains Digitalism.
Just like their release-approach, the themes on the album are all future-related and encourage the listener to question addiction to data and the Internet (‘No Data’), our path into virtuality and the concept of a challenged reality that comes with it (‘Wish I was There’ – “what’s more real, the things you share or the ones you withhold from others?”), the quest for something perfect (in the title track ‘JPEG’), life from a wide-angle kind of view that encompasses not only your own bubble (‘Panavision’) well as dance floor duality between genres (‘DISC_404’), and different outlooks on the near future (‘Chrome.exe’, ‘Speed of Light’).
Of course, ‘Infinity’, the first single release of this album, and the heavy dancefloor tracks ‘Olympia’ and ‘Knight Life’, alongside the atmospheric ‘Data Gardens’ and the gritty yet short ‘Voltage’, a track which was finalised on their Australian tour in Kim from The Presets studio, a friend of the duo, are all essential parts of the sequence.
A guide for our digital, crazy new world – ‘JPEG’ will be out December 6, 2019 – exactly as the prophecy goes that you can mysteriously find out there, on the internet.
Starting their career in 2001, producing vibrant live sets, the Digitalism boys soon signed to Kitsune, with their release ‘Zdarlight’. Following up the release with ‘Jupiter Room’ from their Idealism album, Digitalism soon became synonymous with their unique and original electronic productions, a crossover sound with roots found in both indie and techno. The album, now celebrating a decade since release, became an instant classic in the indie electro scene, establishing Digitalism as one of the biggest acts in the genre, alongside notable acts such as Justice.
