Warm Digits

Blending high-concept songwriting with inspirations spanning Can, Neu!, and Kraftwerk, My Bloody Valentine's dense sonic layers, and Brian Eno's wispy analog melodies, Warm Digits are multi-instrumentalists Andrew Hodson and Steve Jefferis. The duo's 2012 debut album Keep Warm … With the Warm Digits hinted at the shifting layers of nostalgia and futurism that became the focus of later releases like 2013's Interchange, which examined the optimism and faith in progress of the mid-20th century with bittersweet irony. When the duo added guest vocalists to 2017's Wireless World and 2020's Flight of Ideas, their music only became more ambitious and engaging. Prior to forming Warm Digits, Hodson, who is based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, released an album in 2006 with his band the Matinee Orchestra, and ran Seed Studios. As a producer, his clients include Maxïmo Park's Paul Smith and the folk duo Cath & Phil Tyler. Jefferis, who is based in Manchester, released several albums and singles of playful electronica as Cathode. When the pair began working together, their initial efforts resulted in experimental techno along the lines of Basic Channel and Modeselektor. However, when they were tapped to create a live soundtrack for an animated film, the addition of live drums and guitar to their music transformed it into the driving sound for which Warm Digits soon became known. After remixing tracks for UNKLE and Maxïmo Park and performing with the likes of Barbara Morgenstern, Goblin, and Field Music, Warm Digits worked on their first album. Recruiting Field Music's David Brewis to play bass, they edited their improvisations into the ten tracks of Keep Warm... With the Warm Digits, which Distraction Records released in late 2011. Early in 2012, the band collaborated with Brewis and his brother Peter on a performance for the BBC Radio 3 show Late Junction, which was later issued digitally and on vinyl. In 2013, Warm Digits issued Interchange, an audiovisual project they created for Half Memory, an initiative spearheaded by Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums encouraging artists to use the museum's artifacts to create new works. Inspired by '70s images of the building of Tyneside's Metro transit system, the band crafted a film and accompanying soundtrack for the project. Warm Digits also composed music for Esther Johnson's Asunder, a documentary that traced World War I's impact on North East England. The duo, along with Field Music and Bob Stanley, performed the score alongside a string ensemble at a 2017 screening at the Barbican Centre. That year, Hodson and Jefferis also released their third album, Wireless World, which introduced the vocals of friends including Peter Brewis, Saint Etienne's Sarah Cracknell, and Devon Sproule to their Motorik-powered musings on the destructive and constructive sides of technology. Warm Digits continued in a similar vein on their fourth album, April 2020's Flight of Ideas. A set of songs inspired by the way ideas can outlive their usefulness, it included contributions from Emma Pollock, the Orielles, the Lovely Eggs, and Rozi Plain.
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