Datarock
‘Give It Up’ is the awesome comeback single from Datarock’s second album ‘Red’, due out in June. It’s typical Datarock, a brilliant slice of eighties inspired pop - complete with typically witty and surreal lyrics - that hooks you in on first listen.
It was actually an idea for a music video before it became a song, paraphrasing ‘Beat It’, ‘Bad’, the 1961 film of ‘West Side Story’ and the 1996 film of ‘Romeo & Juliet’. “You have a dance battle,” explains Datarock head honcho Fredrik Saroea, “where a Datarock gang meets the bad guys, and we have a dance off, and then everybody becomes the Datarock gang.
“And I’m like Mercutio, trying to tell Romeo to shape up, snap out of it, give it up.” He continues, “Thing is, just singing a song about dancing… it’s too simple. Everyone’s gonna dance anyway. So it’s nice to do something insane in the lyrics, like paraphrasing, you know, ‘Romeo & Juliet!’”.
Datarock first wowed us back in 2005 with their ‘Datarock Datarock’ debut that Fredrik scrappily assembled in ProTools with his musical other-half Ketil Mosnes. It mixed relentless punk-funk with warped, evaporated-in-translation Happy Mondays humour and became the party album of 2005. And they looked cool as fuck with their red tracksuits and oversized shades.
Right now the band is gearing up for a summer of touring and festival dates, having played SXSW and most recently Camden Crawl. They will be back for the Brighton’s Great Escape on the 14th May and then celebrate the release of ‘Give It Up’ with a show at the Barfly in London on 18th May – miss it at your peril.
Upcoming UK dates
14th May – Great Escape, Brighton
18th May – Camden Barfly, London
11th July – Loop Festival, Brighton