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!

etcetc would like to introduce L.A. electro-rock conspirators Jump Jump Dance Dance. Duo Chris Carter and Simon Lewicki had already amassed a wealth of experience before uniting to create Jump Jump Dance Dance: Carter as an in-demand DJ and vocalist who has played alongside luminaries like DJ AM and Tommie Sunshine, and Simon as the mastermind behind the celebrated club acts Tonite Only and Chili Hifly.

They’ve already been responsible for a slew of floor-ready remixes for MSTRKRFT, La Roux, Datarock, and Lost Valentinos. And for their debut album due early 2010 they recruited US heavyweight producer/mixers Dave Sardy (Wolfmother, Oasis, Soulwax and The Ting Tings) and Mark Needham (The Killers, Bloc Party, 3OH!3), plus Australian dance veteran Sameer Sengupta (provider of legendary mixes for Alter Ego and Green Velvet) to lend his formidable experience to some final mixes.

For a taste of what’s to come, watch the video for first single Do It for Love below, which you can download completely free right here:

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