Interview with Datarock

How many members are there in Datarock?

We were playing at the Grammy Awards…and there were more than a hundred people on stage with us. This other time we had a ‘double band’ made up of two drummers, two keyboardists, two guitar players and so on.

Do you always change the number of people depending on the venue?

Yeah, we like to keep it fresh, you know…

Describe the kind of music you make.

We’re mostly affiliated with the electro/dance scene. We also get to hear a lot of music when we travel around. A lot of electro/dance music but we also play a lot of minimal techno. We also play dance or rock, depending on the crowd, you know…the place and everything…

I heard your record got leaked on the internet one month before it came out, how did that make you feel?

Of course we’d prefer if people paid for the music. But with the link came exposure, and there was a lot of talk about it – before the record was even released! – on music forums.

Computer camp love (credit: Liu Shubin)
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So why the stopover in Singapore?

We’re going to go around the world on this trip, we’re going to do Australia next. We’re playing in Melbourne, then Brisbane and Sydney, and then we get to relax during a three-day holiday in Fiji.

You’ve done a few remixes, which is the most unlikely one you did?

Well, we were supposed to do a remix of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend’. We don’t know whether it was her or her record label that wanted it. We made the song quite different from the original and it sounded really cool. We ended up using it as the opening track for our single.

Datarock is a full band, but the face of the band is the two of you.

It’s a marketing tool. It’s because we want to be perceived as an electronic act. But yeah, it’s just a marketing tool…there are over a hundred of us or so.

When you google Casio MT64 images, only pictures of Datarock show up. Why is this instrument so important to your music? Is it lo-fi fascination or nostalgia?

It’s both. It’s not that we don’t want to make music out of band equipment. We just didn’t know anything about band equipment. One thing that really dates music, I think, is the keyboard sound. When people hear it, they go, ‘Ah, that’s one of those toys I used to have when I was a kid.’ You know? It’s like, ‘Ah, I know I’ve heard it somewhere…’, like a church organ or something.

Do you think that your younger audience, between 18 and 25, understands the ’80s or ’70s references in your music? Do you care? Does it matter?

No, it doesn’t matter. But it seems to me that they actually do…I think it’s like the Ramones referring to the mid-’50s. A lot of kids got into it, even though they weren’t born then. I guess it’s the early computer age and access to information, I don’t know. But to me it’s more about the beats and so on. Though we are lucky enough to have audiences up to 50-year-olds. It’s nice to cater to their interests…booking agents or heads of companies, like Steve Schnur [Electronic Arts’ worldwide executive of music and marketing]. I guess that’s why our music also ended up in so many advertisement campaigns, TV shows, films and blah blah blah blah…

Tracksuits…why the obsession?

Well the thing is, when we started making the music, we were inspired by everything we have been exposed to. We were really inspired by late-’70s, mid-’80s music and we wanted a uniform of some kind to unify the band. I guess that it can also be seen as a tribute to [new wave/electronica act] Devo.

Datarock rocked Zirca on 2 Jun!

Weren’t there? Check out their performance playlist below. Big shout out to Liu Shubin for her videos! 

Datarock at Zirca (credit: Liu Shubin)
More videos on Time Out Singapore’s YouTube channel

The performers

Datarock, a Norwegian dance music outfit, is a high-energy disco inferno fuelled by sparse electro-rock rhythms and infectious pop guitar hooks.