Digitalism new album seems to have suffered from the old cliché of the difficult second album and in places ‘I Love You, Dude’ shows that they are still a great electronic act, but deviates too far from what we know and love about the Hamburg duo.

Rather trying to make ‘Idealism Part 2’ they’ve gone down the route of trying to be more traditional with their song structures, it even see’s Jens singing for a number of tracks. Has it been a success? Well, no. There are nuggests of greatness, but it’s full of missed opportunities and attempts at songs that just don’t suit their style.

It’s certainly a brave move and brings them into the sphere of indie crossover. The opening track ‘Stratosphere’ starts the album of with a mish mash of early Digitalism, rock and indie vibes – a steady start, nothing mind blowing, but a decent start nonetheless.

Next we have the second single ’2 Hearts’ where Digitalism shows off their ability to write lyrics and for once sing them – we originally didn’t have a great deal of time for it, but over time it has grown on us – and we have to concede we like it. It sounds very similar to Delphic. This is a good thing. A great summer indie track.

‘Circles’ ups the anti with a proper distorted electro track – the vocal is very annoying. Digitalism lovers with love the trashy synths but we’d like to see this a dub version – not sure the vocal adds to the track.

Fan favourite ‘Blitz’ rears it’s stuttering head halfway through, we think it’s great, we heard it so many times now, but the epic synth driven breakdown still gets us in the mood to dance. A standout track.

The CD picks up some more pace with ‘Forest Gump’ but it ends up sounding like something you’d be likely to hear on Skins. Not a bad track, but the rock and indie influences just don’t sit well enough with the electronic undertones. It suffers from too many crappy chorus’ and not enough punch and power. Not a good track at all.

The CD then starts to fall apart. ‘Reeperbahn’ is a fairly offensive hodgepodge of crazy Rob Zombie rock and electro – it could work in the right hands, but just sounds a bit dated and slightly boring.

Saving graces come the shape of club cuts ‘Antiboitics’ a heavy concoction of techno, acid and electro. This will be something that you’ll be hearing in future live shows for sure. If you’re liking the acid revival of late – then you’ll like this for sure.

The only other notable track comes from ‘Miami Showdown’ probably the finest track on the album and given bizarrely away as freebie by the band – take this, ‘Blitz’, and a couple of others and run.

‘I Love You, Dude’ is a album of two half’s, one half where they stick to the tried and tested Digitalism formula, the other half falls apart quite quickly, apart from ’2 Heart’s’ the indie focussed tracks just don’t work, many of them sound a bit laboured. There’s nothing new or exciting in ‘I Love You, Dude’ – it’s just fails to light the touch paper and in electro that is unforgivable.

HBF Rating 5/10

Out June 5th

Digitalism’s new album seems to polarising opinion before it’s hit shelves, it’s not a terrible album by any stretch of the imagination, but it is far too short and lacks a certain wow factor, but it does seems to grow on you more and more.

Gladly the best track by someway ‘Miami Showdown’ has been given away as free download on the Digitalism website.

It classic Digitalism; distortion and caustic electro that sounds like it made on broken equipment – exactly what we know and love about this duo’s production style.

We’ll review it a little closer to the release, but while you wait grab ‘Miami Showdown’ and know the your hearing the best of what the album has to offer – shame it wasn’t all like this.

Digitalism – Miami Showdown

Download here.

Digitalism’ new album is almost upon us and we’ve spied a couple of new tracks, first we have the track ‘Forest Gump’ with vocals from Julian Casablancas of The Strokes’ fame.

Digitalism – Forrest Gump (feat. Julian Casablancas) by RTribouillier

Next up we have a new remix of the the new single with Rory Philipps on the remix duties. And a fine job he has done too.

Digitalism ’2 Hearts’ (Rory Phillips Mix) by Rory Phillips

‘I Love You, Dude’ is due out June 20th via V2/ Cooperative Music.

Digitalism’s new album ‘I Love You, Dude’ will be released on June 21 on Co-operative/Downtown music and will be the follow-up to the 2007 album ‘Idealism’.

Well, to get you super excited the duo released the first remix of the new single ’2 Hearts’ on their soundcloud and it does not disappoint one bit, were not entirely sure who Amazona Boys are, but we’ll looking into them after hearing this remix.

Grab it for free too.

2 Hearts (Amazona Boys Remix) by digitalism_official

Download here.

Digitalism’s follow up to there amazing album ‘Idealism’ is out on June 2nd, the new album is called ‘I love You, Dude’ and will see the return of the German duo.

’2 Hearts’ will be the first single, it treads the indie dance vibe and isn’t what we were expecting. Not entirely convinced, but we were willing to look past it.

Digitalism – 2 Hearts

Download here.

Via Last Gas Station

We’ve been avoiding any remixes of Tron Legacy, we wanted to let the dust settle – after seeing the film we were left with a bitter taste in our mouth – it’s pretty pap.

But this didn’t really effect Daft Punk’s credibility – they did a great job, even though Hans Zimmer ghost wrote it, it’s just a shame the film part of our nerd-vana sandwich wasn’t really worth all the hype.

Digitalism played a great re-edit of the only dance track “Derezzed” at one of their Japanese DJ shows last week – and we been given permission to give away this DJ friendly version by unkown remixer Decalicious.

It’s more a re-edit, but it’s still pretty sweet – just a bit easier to throw in your sets. And it’s in 320 too, which is always a bonus.

Daft Punk – Derezzed (Decalicious Re-edit)

Grab it here.

www.decalicious.de

Kitsuné has just unleashed a new EP of all of the free tracks that they gave away over the course of 2010, you can get free tracks from Digitalism, May 68, Play Paul, Black Strobe and Yelle.

You’ve probably got most of them already and if you haven’t grab them and be sure to head over to their blog as they’re always giving stuff away for free.

Digitalism – Blitz (Villa Remix)

Grab here.

May68 – The Prisoner (Tomb Crew Remix)

Grab here.

Play Paul – Tijuana (Trumpets of Lust) (Acid Kids Remix)

Grab here.

Black Strobe – Me & Madonna (Tape To Tape Remix)

Grab here.

Yelle – La Musique (Tepr Remix)

Grab here.

Via Kitsuné

Belgium disco boys Villa have been on fine form recently, we have no doubt that these dudes will blow up just like Aeroplane did last year, their level of production only seems to be going up at the moment.

With this new track, they’re certainly cruising at 35,000 feet and quite right too. Anyway, who wants to fly in an Aeroplane, when you fly in a space-age Villa.

This track is their remix of Digitalism’s new track “Blitz”, arguably their finest remix to date.

Digitalism – Blitz (villA Remix) by aRod@GottaDanceDirty

Digitalism’s new track “Blitz” is out soon, November to be precise, and we got a cheeky preview from Sloth Boogie Blog, it’s also been remixed by Belgian boys Villa which is also pretty epic.

Digitalism – Blitz by Audiopleasures

Via http://www.slothboogie.com/

Digitalism are about to release new material from the long-awaited second album and they’re first track “Blitz” is out november 8th including remixes by Harvard Bass, Villa and one more original track.

We got a little taster for you, not a great deal to say about as it ends before it even gets going. But we’ve been promised a promo, so all will be revealed soon enough.

Digitalism – Blitz trailer

Grab here.

Released in 2009 on Kitsune, Digitialism’s video for their club hit Jupiter Room mixes live action with computer generated wizardry.

Directed by Scott Altham, the final edit was created Nathan Green who edited green screen to produce animated LEDs which move in sync with the music.

Nathan Green created  3D models of the dancers so the animated LEDs could run up and down their bodies.

It’s one of the most visually impressive videos that we have ever seen.