Norwegian electronic duo Datarock spontaneously combusted back in 2000 and have been leaving legions of feverishly packed dance floors in their wake ever since. In the interim they’ve been stamped with that damn ‘New Rave’ label, survived a trip to the infamous ‘Cock’ bar in the East Village with the Scissor Sisters, managed to share a dressing room with Amy Winehouse, and are pretty much worshiped as deities in Australia. So with the Ice Cream Man crew scattered to the four corners we sent our ace photog Abbey for an interview. She sat down with Fredrik Saroea and got to talk Nettwerk, wax poetic on Tron and hoodies, and once and for all find out how many of those tracksuits they have.
Ice Cream Man: I actually saw you guys for the first time at SXSW.
Datarock: Which show?
ICM: The Fader Tent show, the daytime one.
DR: That was really early, wasn’t it?
ICM: It was painfully early.
DR: But, you know, we did seven shows at SXSW. We did three shows in four hours. But on the UK tour I think we broke all the limits.
ICM: Was that the NME Tour?
DR: No we did this tour last week. And the most on that tour…we did three cities in 20 hours.
ICM: Which ones?
DR: Well, we played London at two in the morning, and then Manchester at six in the evening, and then Nottingham at ten. And that’s not cities that are close to each other.
ICM: Wow.
DR: So you’ve seen two shows already.
ICM: Yes, and I’m back for a third, because there is just something about your show. I’m a hard sell too, but the live set just absolutely blows people away.
DR: Yeah, I wonder what that is. It’s so energetic, it’s the Norwegian energy.
ICM: Well, what came first- the live show or the songs?
DR: Now, what came first, let me think. Um…
ICM: So did you get together with Kett-ill and have it in your head that you were going to put on this…
DR: Weird concept?
ICM: Yeah.
DR: Yeah!
(laughter)
No, well the things is, this started the thing and then we started recording, with really bad equipment, a really bad sound card and a really bad PC. And really bad cracked software…
And then we recorded, I think it was five songs. And it was never produced or mixed or mastered or anything, it was just put on a ten inch vinyl. And that was made before we ever did a show, so when we put on a show it was just the same way as we made music. We just thought let’s try to do something fun here. So even for the very first gig (Annie’s monthly Pop til You Drop party) we had merchandise. And out of the 230 shows that we’ve done, I don’t think we have had merchandise for more than ten of them. But we did have it for the first show.
ICM: And it sold?
DR: Yes, so even at the first show we had lots of people in front screaming and shouting. So what we did for the first show was, we did half a set. And instead of having a support band we had a support band in the middle. So they did their set and then we came back on and did our second set. I don’t know why. And Annie sang a song with us, and ’cause this was a small club gig, we wanted to sort of make the most of it…in a crappy way. So we got this crappy video projector and projected some crappy stuff. And the projector was on top of a speaker so the image just went fucked.
ICM: It was shaking?
DR: Yeah, but it was shaking to the music, so people thought it was supposed to be like that, all fucked up. Actually if you go to Youtube and check out this Datarock thing called ‘Presentation’… the first 1.5 minutes I think you see a lot of footage from that first show, and I don’t know why after that first show we just got bookings all over.
ICM: Ha, I think I know why. Well then let’s talk about that push out of Bergen- the Bergen Wave if you will.
DR: When we started you had quite a lot of international underground attention: Royksopp, Those Norwegians, and something called Drum Island, and Alania . All of those bands were semi successful so when we started Bergen was kind of well connected internationally.
ICM: and the rest is history. So you’re listed everywhere as a duo, but onstage Datarock is at the very least a 4 piece band. Where did you pick them up?
DR: They’re all from Bergen, all close friends of ours. Like the guy we’re drumming with today, I’ve known him since I was probably 14 -15-16. Maybe 17- but yeah we’re all from the same scene.
ICM: I though at SXSW this year there was such a positive feeling involving the Scandinavian showcases. It was kind of ‘Nordic Rule’ if you had to pick a region that walked off with the prize.
DR: Really? Yeah it’s crazy how the shows are so well received, and it’s crazy how energetic we are onstage… considering how we are off stage.
ICM: Ha! Is there something magic in those tracksuits when you put them on? Actually I really wanted to ask was how many of those do you have?
DR: You don’t want to know, there’s just one. We share it. It’s still wet from Philadelphia last night.
ICM: Then that really is magical. Isn’t that what tour managers are for? Or at least Febreze?
DR: Ok, well for this new tour, the ones that say Datarock all over? We only had 100 made.. and the album was reissued in like 30 countries, so we have approx 2 tracksuits per country? Someday they will be on eBay I’m sure. $1000.00 tracksuit worn on stage! Unwashed and full of sweat!
ICM: That brings us to another question…. You know there’s that Rapture song called People Don’t Dance No More (they just stand here like this)
DR: Oh do they now?
ICM: Well obviously not so much with Datarock shows, you got me there. I was just wondering if you noticed any massive differences between American audiences versus people that are more familiar with your work.
DR: Not really, I was surprised! Because we sold out Spaceland and the atmosphere was like our set was highly anticipated.
ICM: Well, it totally was. I sent at least 5 people to that show.
DR: Hmmm I mean the UK was kind of different than the rest of Europe. That NME tour was an all ages tour, and the average age of all 400 people was 16… ALL up front…. I haven’t seen that many 16 year olds, well, since I was 16! So that was weird; but I mean people are dancing more now than they did 3 years ago.
ICM: Ummm well, I have to ask then: well what do you think about the term New Rave?
DR: What do I think about it? It’s stupid. But it’s ok. I mean you know where that term came about, the whole story?
ICM: Yeah
DR: Well NME is selling magazines to kids between 14 and 22. They don’t know what ‘Rave’ was I assume.
ICM: I would hope not!
DR: (laughs) Yeah exactly! So for them it completely made sense because Rave didn’t mean anything for them. But in England yeah everybody is having a good time. Wearing funny colors and enjoying themselves and they’re laughing and smiling and dancing.
ICM: Absolutely. Yeah if anything people are getting shamed back onto the dance floor… like with CSS and NYPC. Just watching them come through here over the past year. It’s been great to see it. I never knew if could happen.
DR: No it is surprising isn’t it? Like for instance suddenly you have this very fashionable thing and they don’t have to have expensive accessories; just put tape on a white t shirt and you’re New Rave!
ICM: Don’t forget about the hoodies. And then hoodies with dinosaurs on it… I guess that’s more American though.
DR: Well that’s Dimmak isn’t it?
ICM: That’s Steve.
DR: Yeah I have one of those.
ICM: Yeah everybody does! Well now they’re making knockoff ones, you can get them in the Bronx.
DR: All the different prints?
ICM: Yup. Why, do you want a black and gold one?
DR: Well actually I had a meeting with their designer We’re making hoodies for them. It’s not going to be dinosaurs though, it’s gonna be very new rave actually to be honest. Do you know that Walt Disney movie called Tron from ’83?
ICM: Yeah I saw that in the theaters. I was like 4 at my grandparents’ house in Bakersfield or something.
DR: Are you kidding? Wow I remember the ads for the film in Donald Duck the magazine back home but nobody saw it. I really like the aesthetics of it all. It’s made on 90 mill film and all hand painted.
ICM: It was so blue!
DR: We’re taking inspiration from the designer -the aesthetics of electricity and then the circuit cards.. Some of the stuff is gonna be see through luminous that you won’t see until it’s dark. Hopefully Walt Disney doesn’t sue us! But the guy that did that is my favorite cartoonist it’s a French guy called Jean Giraud or Moebius.
ICM: I definitely need to watch that again then. Well now that we are talking favorites here’s another question: if you could pick a dream band to go on tour with who would it be?
DR: Wow. Talking Heads, the Stop Making Sense Tour. We’ve met so many of Datarock’s idols, but we’ve never run into that guy.
ICM: David Byrne is just effing amazing.
DR: I wish we could work with him on visual stuff. You know the True Stories movie?
ICM: One of my favorites. My older brother dragged me when it came out and we never were the same.
DR: Well one of the songs we are playing tonight is inspired by True Stories. I arranged all the sentences in the lyrics from their song titles.
ICM: Well then I will definitely keep an eye out for that one! One last thing. How did you guys end up signing to Nettwerk?
DR: That’s a crazy little story! What happened was that our 10″s became famous in Australia and suddenly we got crazy fees to go there. Our Myspace is getting hits in the US and songs all over the world, and we’re releasing on our own label right? and we’re just thinking we can’t take care of it all.
ICM: Yeah it’s just getting overwhelming?
DR: Exactly. So basically we’re looking for a normal signing, and the only company we got in serous talks with was actually v2. All the labels came to the shows and stuff, but no one else was interested.
ICM: Not even Modular?
DR: No weirdly enough … because Modular is Australian, and Australia is really what kick started out commercial thing. I knew that V2 was sort of having financial difficulties so I wasn’t really keen on signing to them but they were the only option. Anyways then out of the blue comes a guy called Mark Jowett. He does A&R and is one of the 3 owners of the Nettwerk Group, and he just calls me like’ Yeah hi I want to come and see your show in Oslo.’ I didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know there was even a label called Nettwerk! I didn’t listen to Sarah MacLachlan.
ICM: Exactly why I asked.
DRM: So the guy shows up and is just the nicest guy we’ve ever met in the industry. He’s this completely calm relaxed guy who doest even talk like a businessman. So we’re just assuming that he’s representing a very small company that couldn’t really do anything for us because usually those are the nice guys…
ICM: Right, instead of assuming he’s repping an establishment that has managed Avril Lavigne and Coldplay?
DR: Exactly. So we had this really nice talk when he saw the show and wanted to sign us. So we did some investigations.. and then we understood that Nettwerk, well, they know their shit! You know the kind of music we do is very kind of a dangerous place to be if you’re hyped a little because then you might get signed (right away), and those labels can suddenly totally go broke.
ICM: How so?
DR: If you sign a little band to a big label, the A&R person that has the assignment of keeping the label a trendy or whatever, well he can get sacked because those labels don’t live off bands like us. So most of the deals we could have ended up with could have been potentially been negative for us.
The contract deal with Nettwerk is fantastic. It’s a license deal, which basically means after 12 years if it doesn’t work out we own the master tapes. But the good thing with Nettwerk is that they have long term collaborations with their artists. I mean I don’t even talk to an A&R scout, I just talk with Mark which is perfect. There is no middle man. The interesting thing is he was tipped off to us by a guy called Kevin Kocher. I remember him sending us a Myspace message ‘I’m your biggest fan blah blah blah’ and he is now our manager!
Just 1/2 a year ago we did everything ourselves with our own label. We were working so hard at getting all of these fucking deals fixed and now we’re working with a fantastic label and have a great publishing deal and great management and crew and everything’s cool.
ICM: Awesome. World domination!
DR: World Domination! We had just reinvested everything we earned. It was kind of stressful, and then just at the very last moment everything was just sorted. Especially with exposure like NME and stuff we could so easily flare out.
ICM: Yeah I don’t think that’s gonna be the case
DR: Yeah I don’t think so either!
Datarock’s album Datarock Datarock is released today (June 12) on Nettwerk.
