What a difference a pop cultural revolution makes. Five or six years ago, Digitialism's noisy (but not too noisy) and rocking (but not too rocking) electro house was the sound of indie dance. Back then, folks like Digitalism and Justice were routinely castigated by house aesthetes and techno snobs as barbarians, elevating sensation and riff above groove, and bringing icky rock music values into the club. Heard now, on Digitalism's new DJ-Kicks installment, all the ire this stuff inspired from dance purists at the time just feels kind of quaint.
The world-conquering dubstep, however horribly mutated from its original form, has changed the game when it comes to dance music as parent-annoying ruckus. In the midst of this new dance-meets-rock order, with its nuance-obliterating bass drops and synth buzz like being happily fed face-first into a garbage disposal, Digitalism's blend of slick computer love and a little rock swagger on this mix comes off downright restrained. Music for adults, even, which makes sense when you figure the original French house generation, which is where the Germans of Digitalism get much of their musical DNA, has reached club-avoiding middle-age. Compared to the hounds-of-hell snarling of your most boneheaded dubsteppers, the Digitalism dudes might as well be Derrick May and Carl Craig at their most grown-and-sexy.
You'll get mostly what you'd expect if you have any familiarity with Digitalism or their middle-of-last-decade peers: plenty of narcotically glossy high-speed French house (most of Digitalism's own productions) and druggy slow-motion electro grooves (Tomas Barfod's "Came to Party", like raucous ghettotech pitched down to dream-pop torpor). Live-sounding rock drums (the pensive motorik of Grauzone's "Raum") trading off with vintage techno rhythm programming (the ticking-to-explosion of TWR72's "Summer"). And of course riffs galore, even if they now sound finessed rather than game-changingly ugly. The mixing is smooth instead of slamming, but then Digitalism were never really true brutalists, at least not on the level of an act like Justice.
True enough, there are a few jarring transitions of the sort that are unavoidable when you go scene-hopping from track to track. But for the most part the mix is an even-keeled journey to no particular climax. That's a problem if you look for mixes, even home-listening mixes, to have a sense of peaks-and-valleys drama, build over time in intensity, or offer some narrative flow. In 2007, Digitalism and their ilk could feel like a much-needed adrenalized alternative to the arid lack-of-excess that defined the glut of inessential minimal techno. Here they've taken intensity down a notch or two, which often turns this DJ-Kicks into nostalgia-tinged background buzz to while away an afternoon, ambient house with rock sound effects subbed in for the bird-calls and rushing water. As your attention drifts in and out, it can feel as if they've replaced the aimlessness of bad minimal with the aimlessness of defanged pop dance, at which point you might as well just turn on the radio these days.
So it's not that Digitalism have changed up their approach here. At all. One dance generation's populist heroes always become elder statesmen when the next generation of sensation-hungry kids comes along to render their musical values out-of-date. On this DJ-Kicks, Digitalism seem plenty comfortable settling into that role, the thorough professionals rather than the one-time radicals, doing a job without offering many surprises along the way. Then again, one remix here is labeled the "Digitalism electroclash mix." In 2012, using the word "electroclash," without a hint of irony, is pretty much shorthand for "stuck in a rut and not really unhappy about it."
