In recent years, France has been getting a lot of the publicity for electronic music — Daft Punk, Justice, and other Gallic house musicians have been all over. So when we saw that Digitalism, who play DC9 tonight, were from Germany, where minimalist bleeps and bloops dominate, it was a little surprising. They're not Parisians in a cafe, but Hamburg residents who record in a World War II bunker. Jens Moelle, one half of the duo, said that wasn't the plan.

"We didn’t decide anything, didn’t have a master plan. We started doing Digitalism because we were a bit bored by the music around and we wanted to have something for us to DJ that would excite us," said Moelle from Austin, where the group had just played South by Southwest. "We don’t really care what the scene is like in Germany or around us, we just try to be independent from everything."

The group came together when Moelle met Ismail "Isi" Tuefekci, the son of Turkish immigrants, at a record store in their native Hamburg. The two liked the same music and were soon working at the store. The store's owner suggested the duo DJ a party, and Digitalism was formed. The name, which fits the electronic group, was inspired by a series of records, Moelle said.

"We were playing house as well and there was a series called Africanism on Yellow Records from France, and we quite liked the first release because they were really rough, and that’s what we like, basically."

What they like basically is also propulsive, booming electronic anthems like "Pogo" and "Idealism", but Moelle said they take their influences not from other groups, but from film. "We think in movies or pictures always," and they're trying to add more emotion to the dance floor, "to bring back some romance into electronic music. I think our music is a bit romantic as well, a bit melancholic, that's been missing before... there's been so much club music around that’s only functional stuff."

Moelle says the band has a bit of a rough kitchen sink element to it. "We like to try out stuff, so we’ve got loads of synthesizers. Sometimes we just process stuff we recorded somehow with microphones and try to authorize [the recordings], and it’s a bit of a patchwork," Moelle said. "We're kind of like a garage band, because we produce in a World War II bunker — it hasn’t got any windows, it’s quite dark and naked in there."

And no mistake, it's a genuine bunker, not a studio. "It doesn’t look like a studio, it looks more like a devastated room because we’re quite messy, not professional at all," Moelle says, laughing. We have a feeling DC9's small confines might resemble a devastated bunker after tonight's show.

The show is at DC9, with openers DJ People's Champion and Guns n Bombs. Doors open at 9, tickets are $18. Get there early, it may be crowded.

Photo from Flickr user sint, used under a Creative Commons license.