DJ Heartstring are the Jürgen Klopps of electronic music

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Berlin-based electronic duo DJ Heartstring are more than just your average ravers. Of course, raving is a passion, but it’s how you do the raving, how you feel the raving and how you bring that appetite for transcendent joy and experiences into everything else that you do. DJ Heartstring are here to show that the rave is a place for all manner of people and passions.

Leo and Jonas complement each other in their personalities and quirks, whether it’s Leo’s love of skateboarding or Jonas’ love of football and his German club St Pauli. The high-energy, direct, relentless passion of one of Germany’s football legends also happens to strike a chord with DJ Heartstring and their desire to move head, body and soul. “We are the Jürgen Klopp of electronic music,” laughs Jonas.

All that energy and boundless youthful exuberance is captured on DJ Heartstring’s debut album ‘Sentimental Ultra’, which follows several years spent building their reputation as euphoric party starters through a string of singles, remixes, wild DJ sets and collaborations with artists including SWIM and KETTAMA.

An album wasn’t actually part of the immediate plan, though. “A lot of the things that have happened over the last, like, six years are happy accidents,” explains Leo. “The album, we jokingly say, is also a happy accident because we never really planned on making one. We always said that we wanted to make an album eventually, but we didn’t really plan on doing one now; it just happened. We don’t really try to plan a lot of things; they happen in a very natural way.”

Because they didn’t realise they were making an album until they were already well into the process, they avoided much of the stress and pressure that can come with a debut. They were simply making music as they always had. “We were able to not stress about it too much because by the time we realised, oh, fuck, this is actually an album, we already had the blueprint of the album.”

The record they ended up creating allows them to explore possibilities that might previously have been harder to accommodate. “I think one thing that makes a big difference is the BPM and the overall variety of the songs,” says Jonas.

“When you’re in the loop of having an EP or single every other week, or maybe a release every month, it feels like, especially if you’re touring every week, you’re definitely trying to make something very palatable for the dance floor every time. You have something very high-energy; a single-worthy, radio-friendly banger.”

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A lot of the things that have happened are happy accidents

Leo, DJ Heartstring

With a full album to work with, DJ Heartstring had room to explore their feelings alongside the dancefloor thrills. Across its 15 tracks, ‘Sentimental Ultra’ draws on everything from trance and Eurodance to the guitar music and mid-noughties indie rock that soundtracked their younger years.

‘Sentimental Ultra’ is an album that’s both hard and soft at the same time. Often their beats are as frenzied and go off as hard as ever, but on this record the high energy is shot through with a dose of introspection. “The themes are stuff that we’ve been doing, but articulated in a different way,” explains Jonas. “It’s melancholia, but nostalgia, and also sentimental. We’re putting a positive spin on it.”

“When you listen to the album in full, it’s like a journey in the way that it does become a little bit more sentimental in a, I don’t want to say sad, but maybe a bit less happy way, and then it picks back up towards the end. It’s like a relationship that breaks up, but then you end up being in a better place afterwards.”

Nobody can be relentlessly happy all the time, but in embracing their softer, more emotionally charged sides, DJ Heartstring are making melancholia something to celebrate rather than an excuse to wallow in despair. “Nostalgia and melancholia are both emotions that can be very positive but can also be negative emotions, you know, because they hold you back, but I think we try to put a more positive spin on them.”

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It’s like a relationship that breaks up, but then you end up being in a better place afterwards

Jonas, DJ Heartstring

That positive spin is there in the sugar-rush sparkle of tracks like ‘You’ve Been On My Mind’ and ‘Another Year Alone (i love you)’, the latter drawing on the guitar music that helped inspire the record. Elsewhere, ‘3AM/4AM’, featuring MONK, 3NDLES5 and Crazymike, mixes jungle influences with a four-to-the-floor beat and spoken word in German and English.

There’s also ‘What Music Felt Like In 2007’, a collaboration with BAUGRUPPE90 whose title has prompted a fair few questions. “People ask us what music felt like in 2007. But I think it’s not really so much about what music felt like; it’s just what it felt like,” says Jonas.

“In 2007, we were all in our early youth and enjoying the freedom of that time, the carelessness and the pure joy that you experience. That’s what we are trying to capture. When we were talking about what we should name the song, it was this feeling that we wanted to capture rather than the actual sound of the music in 2007.”

“That song reminds us of the feeling when you’re thinking of back in the day, and it just feels like everything was easier,” adds Leo.

Coming up with the album title, meanwhile, was apparently much more straightforward. But how are Jonas and Leo when it comes to embracing their own sentimentality? Are they sentimental people at heart? “I can only speak for myself here, but I’m trying not to be, but I think I definitely am,” laughs Jonas.

Leo has a different take on their sentimentality and the value of being emotionally open. “We are also both rather introverted or overthinkers in certain ways, especially in the last couple of years with the rise of DJ superstars and also the harder music.”

On ‘Sentimental Ultra’, DJ Heartstring make dance music that accommodates different tempos, moods and approaches. Perhaps the most striking example of their eclectic impulses is the freewheeling ‘All That’s Left Behind’, which features vocals from punk artist KennyHoopla.

Despite collaborating on the track, the duo have never actually met him. “I hope we’re going to do it soon,” says Jonas. It’s one of several collaborations across the album, with guests including Sam Gellaitry, DMA’S, Saidah and SWIM.

Rather than simply collecting a dozen tracks designed to send a room into overdrive, ‘Sentimental Ultra’ allows Leo and Jonas to explore subtlety as a counterpoint to maximalism.

Both pinpoint different songs to illustrate the album’s depth of feeling. “The title track feels like old Heartstring, but in a way, in a new kind of dress,” says Jonas.

Leo, meanwhile, focuses on the record’s reassuring conclusion. “I feel like this last song is quite wholesome and has this everything’s going to be all right feeling to it, and it’s also super emotional, but not like over the top. It feels very calming, especially as the last song.”

For DJ Heartstring, that belief that everything is going to be all right reflects both their bond and their faith in dance music’s ability to stir emotions beyond the immediate thrill of a night out.

‘Sentimental Ultra’ finds the duo expanding what DJ Heartstring can be without abandoning what made people fall for them in the first place. The Jürgen Klopps of electronic music, perhaps, but with a few more feelings to work through along the way.

DJ Heartstring’s debut album ‘Sentimental Ultra’ is out now.