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Norway’s Datarock have returned with the follow up to the geek-chic party album of 2005, Datarock Datarock and will be heading down under to serve it up live to Australian audiences.
Their debut mixed Happy Mondays punk-funk with warped Devo humour, and was well received locally with ‘Computer Camp Love’ landing #12 on Triple J’s Hottest 100. The new album, Red, has lost none of the duo’s aptitude for so-classic-you-must-haveheard-it-before hooks, but this follow-up is an altogether more concept-driven beast. |
For example, lead single ‘Give it Up’ was actually an idea for a music video before it became a song, paraphrasing Beat It, Bad,West Side Story, and Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo & Juliet. And what a music video it became, featuring red-hot moves and hot-red tracksuits that set the international blog world afire following its premiere on Pitchfork. Australia, too, gave it up for the track which received continuing support from Triple J, Channel V, and MTV.
As an album, Red is a thoroughly unashamed love-letter to the influences that made Datarock what they are today.
DEVO, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Talking Heads, Haruki Murakami, Don Delilo’s White Noise, Scott Walker, the works of John Hughes and Peter Greenaway, and even Molly Ringwald (in the song Molly) are all referenced. Pop cultural fluff that is meaningful because invoking them now as adults is a sharp reminder from a more innocent time that we should ALWAYS be having more fun than we are right now.
But Red is not all nostalgic longing. Datarock are just as interested in this day and age, expressed through their love-hate relationship with technology and communication. On ‘The Pretender’, Fredrik announces he is, “In love with my avatar!”, before reeling off a list of the multiple duplicitous identities available to him online – North Korean? South American? Presbyterian? ‘The Blog’, meanwhile, is an attempt by these technology-fetishists to romanticise the early utopian promise of the Internet, before it became something that people just took for granted and got annoyed by. It’s total retrofuturism.
Red isn’t just a socio-political tract about the fluid nature of identity in the Internet age. It’s also a eulogy for nostalgia. It’s an abstract notion in an era of instant data retrieval. And it’s the party album of 2009! Join Datarock and head back to the future when they perform over the New Year festival season and two special headline shows in Sydney and Melbourne!
DATES
Tue 29th Dec 2009 Falls Festival, Lorne VIC
Thu 31st Dec 2009 Falls Festival, Marion Bay, Tas
Fri 1st January 2010 Field Day, Sydney NSW
Sat 2 January 2010 Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
Tue 5 January 2010 The Hi-Fi, Melbourne Victoria
Wed 6th January 2010 Sunset Sounds, Brisbane QLD
Sun 10th Jan 2010 Southbound Festival, Perth
– Datarock at iTunes
Visit Chugg Entertainment for full tour details and updates.
Related:
Photo Gallery: Datarock + Art vs Science + ELKE @ The Zoo, Brisbane – 5th June 2009
Interview: Datarock – Give It Up