2009 was a big year for etcetc: Lost Valentinos, Fever Ray,  Two Door Cinema Club, autoKratz, Duck Sauce, Cassius, Beni, Datarock, Jenny Wilson, MSTRKRFT, Jump Jump Dance Dance…we could go on. Now that it’s time to vote in the Triple J Hottest 100, may we present our extremely biased list of the top songs of ‘09:

Datarock are almost here! Wooooo! To get you even more in the mood than you already are, here is a super special message courtesy of the one and only Rock-steady Freddie:

Festival favourites Datarock are returning to our shores in December – January to play Falls, Field Day, Sunset Sounds and Southbound, plus side-shows at The Metro, Sydney (Jan 2) and the Hi-Fi, Melbourne (Jan 5).

Tickets are on sale now!

They’ve just lent their formidable rock skills to a brilliant cover of the Transformers theme. Listen to it below:

The follow up to their 2005 geek-chic punk-funk debut Datarock Datarock, Red is a slice of nostalgic futurism that wears it’s influences on it’s track suit sleeve.

It features the singles Give it Up and The Pretender, and is kindly explained in great detail below by lead singer Fredrik.

Datarock are nearly upon our shores where the’ll be headlining the Come Together Festival in Sydney, plus dates in Brisbane and Melbourne. The Norwegians were last here in 2007 to support their punk-funk-geek-chic debut Datarock Datarock, which spawned the hits Computer Camp Love, Fa Fa Fa, and I Used to Dance with My Daddy.

Expect to hear plenty of tracks from their upcoming sophomore album Red including Give it Up plus new single The Pretender.

Red is out June 12.

Live Dates:
4 June – The Hifi, Melbourne
5 June – The Zoo, Brisbane
6 June – Come Together Festival, Sydney

Red has lost none of Fredrik Saroea and musical partner Ketil Mosnes’ 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.

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!

Datarock will be touring nationally in June.

Album Red is out now on etcetc. Buy it from iTunes or JB Hi-fi.

Tracklisting:
1. The Blog
2. Give It Up
3. True Stories
4. Dance!
5. Molly
6. Do It Your Way
7. In The Red
8. Fear Of Death
9. Amarillion
10. The Pretender
11. Back In The Seventies
12. Not Me
13. New Days Dawn

Well, it’s got nothing on the new Datarock video for Give it Up.

Featuring dance moves so hot they turned the band’s tracksuits red, the video is a slice of Beat It with a sprinkle of West Side Story.

It’s taken from their new album Red, out 12 June. If you’re a fan of the band, or just of the colour red, make sure you request them on Triple J’s Super Request.

Datarock are back with a new single and their trademark red tracksuits!

The first single from their (highly anticipated) upcoming album is Give It Up. The album is due out through etcetc in June, but rather than make you wait that long… here is something to get you excited about the release! A remix by UK art college drop out turned superstar Producer/DJ Kissy Sell Out

Datarock Give It Up (Kissy Sell Out Remix)

NME Magazine recently premiered the remix on their blog, which you can download free here!