The Harder View

With the launch of their second and lengthily-titled album, Analogue Players in a Digital World just around the corner, I thought it might be high time we covered and created a little buzz for what is likely to be a pretty huge milestone in the careers for the Showtek brothers, Wouter and Sjoerd Jenssen.

As of the 15th this month, the Analogue Players in a Digital World website has officially launched, which gives us some insight as to what fans can expect on the album, and a bit of background information in regards to the many recent achievements of Showtek. This is not to mention the duo leaving Platinum bookings earlier this year to join Marcel Scheffers’ (Marcel Woods) booking agency, 2Dutch, which has seen the amount of bookings, and the diversity of locations of those bookings expand immensely.

We’ve been fed a couple of teasers from the album courtesy of the Showtek YouTube channel, the first being The World is Mine, an FTS-style track, including vocals which can be interpreted in numerous ways depending on how you take the context of the lyrics. The other, We Speak Music, uploaded yesterday, is a melodic nustyle track with a rough edge, which is fairly typical of the Showtek production style. On the album website, we’re treated to two more musical gems, the first, entitled ‘Freak’ and a seemingly unexpected remix of the already great We Live for the Music by one of the biggest names in the scene at the moment, Noisecontrollers.

The description of the album written on the website reads that it’s ‘… all topped of with devastating powerful riffs, attended with vocals and lyrics that will easily suit a pop band.’ Devastating, powerful riffs are always a good thing, but the ‘lyrics that suit a pop band’ worries me a little, for obvious reasons. However, Showtek have proven time and time again that their almost unrivaled production skills and knowledge of the crowds can be used in combination to create fresh, innovative sounds that always have a hard edge to them. This even counts with ‘pop band vocals’, as we’ve so clearly seen in tracks such as Hold Us Back and their remix of Timbaland’s Apologize, so perhaps there should be no cause for concern if they’re going down the vocal route.

The album is scheduled to be released on the 24th of October. With the album release comes the album launch world tour. Starting in late 2009 moving through to 2010, from the US to the UK, all over Europe then down to the exploding scene in Australia, Showtek will be performing in over 30 cities to promote the new album, and if you’re someone who’s seen Showtek play elsewhere, particularly in a club, you’ll know what a show this will be. Not only this, but joining them will be the likes of Zany, Dutch Master, Donkey Rollers LIVE, Noisecontrollers, Southstylers LIVE, Abyss & Judge, Jowan and MC DV8.

Cities visited are as follows:

Keep an eye out as we’ll be posting the exact venues they’ll be playing at as they’re announced.