DANCING IN THE DARK
WYNDHAM WALLACE
The Upside Down: Datarock’s new album, Face The Brutality, has been influenced by Talking Heads, David Bowie, Devo and the soundtrack to the Stranger ThingsTV show
It’s lunchtime and Fredrik Saroea, Datarock’s main man, is pointing at a salad that’s nestled between a bowl of fried reindeer salami and a plate of battered fish, while another dish of caramelised scallops lurks just out of reach. This, he explains, is a clam and mussel salad, but these aren’t your everyday molluscs. These are mahogany clams and they reach the ripe old age of around 150 years before they’re harvested locally by an enterprising diver. Experts can tell how old they are because, just as with trees, they can count how many rings they have on their shells, Saroea explains. One specimen, found a decade ago in Icelandic waters (known, Saroea blithely proclaims, as Ming The Clam), was older than half a millennium. This isn’t a conversation one expects to have when meeting a musician…
“THE BAND WAS SO ODDLY POSITIONED THAT I DIDN’T KNOW IN WHICH DIRECTION WE WERE HEADING…SO DATAROCK GRADUALLY CAME TUMBLING DOWN.” FREDRIK SAROEA
EAT TO THE BEAT
Datarock, however, aren’t your average band. Initially tagged by critics – impetuously and, arguably, wholly inaccurately – with the ‘new rave’ label in the early 2000s, they’re perhaps as well known for the red tracksuits and wraparound shades, which they wear at shows, as they’re for Fa-Fa-Fa, the 2005 single which featured in advertisements for both Apple and Coca Cola. Though they’ve been quiet in recent years, their playful mix of funk, disco and synth-pop has always enjoyed international success and they were once in such demand that, Saroea boasts: “We spent years touring up to 250 days in almost 30 countries across five continents.” They’ve also, among other unconventional manoeuvres, contributed to bizarre US children’s TV show Yo Gabba Gabba!, released an EP in the form of a toy designed by Brian Flynn (of cult Japanese action figure revivalists Super7), and once put out a limited edition single, I Know What Boys Like, which was actually a red vinyl 7” by 90s pop duo Shampoo, relabelled at the wrong speed…