Datarock's Fredrik Saroea Says 'Vote!' & Explains The Worldwide Impact Of The US Election

In April 2020, Datarock celebrated the 15th anniversary of their debut album, Datarock Datarock, by releasing it on vinyl for the very first time. Also related, they unleashed a cascade of hilarious animations and revamped their website.

But with further festivities grounded by Covid, some other mysterious things began happening. Inspired by the memory of their early recording days, the band began recording demos, really a lot of demos. So far, the result has been the release of the new singles "Digital Life" and "Tick Tock", the former of which delves into some serious mishandling of digital information and the latter operating as a call to vote. Not just for the good of the United States, but for the rest of the world, too.

Datarock's Frederik Saroea spoke with Tower's PULSE! about the impact of the 15th anniversary, the rise of these new singles, and why a band from Norway has something to say to America right now.

Hannah Means-Shannon: By the way, your website looks great. I love the extensive visual essay about the band’s history.

Fredrik Saroea: It’s crazy! We had some help from a journalist, Wyndham Wallace.

HMS: Tower Records is a record store, so we’re really excited that for the 15^th anniversary of Datarock Datarock, it has been released on vinyl.

FS: Can you believe it? That album was never ever released on vinyl. We realized that, and then it was a match made in heaven to do it for Record Store Day, though I didn’t realize it wouldn’t be part of the US Record Store Day. The whole idea of releasing the album on vinyl was that the album was originally released in April and Record Store Day was in April, so it was perfect. But of course, in March, everything shut down for Covid, and all the festival gigs, all the club gigs, all the promotional stuff that were supposed to do shut down. The 15^th anniversary kind of went to shit.

HMS: That’s so terrible. I’m so sorry.

FS: But we ended up building the whole release around Record Store Day, internationally, and it allowed us to create that homepage with the longform article that you mentioned. We also made all these really fun animations.

There’s a Canadian journalist called Nardwuar who all the kids know because his video interviews are so funny. He’s become a Youtube phenomenon, and he’s really a nutcase. When interviewing, he knows everything about you, and he did this before you could just google info about people. Five or six of our animations are from interviews we did with Nardwuar from Vancouver in 2006 or 2007.

At the time, I didn’t know who he was, I just thought he was this lunatic. He was so weird. I really had to concentrate because the same day we had an ordeal getting through customs and I think I had 45 minutes to have dinner before the soundcheck and the concert, and then this absurd person called me. I had no reason to know who he was back then, because he was on community radio. In the segment, a couple of times, you can hear me almost about to lose it. But we cut out a few pieces of a very long interview to create six or seven animation.

We also made a short documentary about the album. But then we ended up having nothing to do. So we were in the mindset of celebrating the 15^th anniversary and reliving the past. We were remembering how we made that album in 2005. That was before all the advertisements and films. We remembered the fun and the innocence, and the imaginative creativity we had before we entered a semi-commercial realm. We were so into that first album that, trapped in our rehearsal space, we turned it into a little studio, and then we just started making more songs than ever. I think we have like 40 demos.

HMS: Do you mean that you just made 40 demos, right now?

FS: Right now!

HMS: That is such wonderful news.

FS: There was nothing to do. There was no reason to be clever about it. There is no music industry right now. There are no festivals to flirt with. It’s all terrible, and I feel sorry for everyone, including myself, but at the same time, parts of this industry need to burn.

HMS: Can you tell me which bits? What do you think needs to happen?

FS: It’s impossible to be immune to the kinds of changes you see happening right now. At the time we entered the wonderful, global world of the internet, you had all these young writers who aspired to write longform, elaborate, beautiful reviews like we grew up in Q Magazine, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone. Then, suddenly, you had all these wonderful blogs. It was amazing. It was the democratization of journalism. Suddenly all sorts of weird music could end up with reviews. That happened with us at Pitchfork, before Pitchfork was a big deal, and they were supernerds we used to run into at shows. MySpace was so weird back then that Suicide Girls reigned. It was a wonderful and amazing time.

Then the streaming services came, building on MySpace, and you could suddenly find these amazing bands who you would never be able to find anywhere physically. But then, as often happens, this wonderful world became very monopolized and homogenized. It became a numbers game of algorithms you can affect. Someone can, though I probably can’t. It’s become so hard to make any income whatsoever through the streaming.

I recently met a friend, an Alternative artist, with tremendous feedback and a fair share of plays around the world. He made something like $50.00 in two months from the streaming services. Even to be able to pay your electricity bill in the studio, there needs to be a minimum income. When there’s such a low income from streaming, a lot of people, even unknowingly, start to try to fit whatever genres will get you on playlists.

HMS: Thank you for all of that explanation. It fits my observations, and you have a ton of experience in the music industry at this point, so it’s great to hear from you on this.

FS: By the way, I don’t even think that the consumer has to pay much more for streaming, it’s just that the revenue needs to be divided in a more equal way. There are all sorts of weird things about streaming services.

HMS: I wanted to ask you how you built your own label, YAP, and managed to distribute it.

FS: There is a Norwegian company, originally a Black Metal distribution company called VMC. They distributed Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Enslaved, when we got a manufacturing deal with them. The local company that we used to release on had direct to store sales, but we needed manufacturing. They used to release in ten countries. In Australia, there was a company called Creative Vibes, a married couple with one employee, and she sent one CD to the national radio and they ended up playing Datarock all the time.

HMS: That’s so cool!

FS: We ended up doing eight national tours in Australia thanks to them, one married couple and one employee.

HMS: That shows the power of people who have focus and make a decision to do something.

FS: Exactly. Now we have distribution through something called Plastic Head in the UK. But to go back to releasing this 15^th anniversary album, it made us remember how things used to be. Back in the day, if you released something on vinyl, and you got some help to make the cover, or you went to get it mixed, there was quality control. You wouldn’t release until you’d played a few shows, and everyone you’d run into would somehow affect you in a positive way. They’d nudge you in the right direction. Gradually, you’d maneuvered your way toward an identity. You’d end up with a product that hundreds of people had, in some way, affected.

HMS: So it helped you reach people better through your music to have had that feedback?

FS: Yes. Then the world of singles and the algorithms of streaming services came in. There is quality control in terms of sales sheets and costs. But it was so amazing to hold the physical version of our debut album and remember what the music world was all about. We ended up writing so much music because of that, and so much of it is so weird, and reflects what’s in our record collections, and is true to our aesthetics and what we like, and what our friends like.

Finally, I snapped out of this terrible maze that we’d been trapping ourselves in.

HMS: This was a kind of realization for you? It was a transformative thing to look back at the first album?

FS: I’m not the only one. It helped me to see myself from the outside. That’s what the new singles are. I know we should have waited and planned ahead more, but I wanted to release them now because right now is when I care about these topics.

HMS: Well, they are very relevant. I was going to ask you how all this talk of streaming and the internet plays into the “Digital Life” single. Or is that an even bigger discussion about the digital role in our lives?

FS: It is. But in this case, it’s called “Digital Life”, because it’s named after Alexander Kogan’s Facebook app, “This is Your Digital Life”. I think the story goes like this: People okayed this app to be used in their profile to collect data that was supposed to be used to be put into a science project to somehow map the day to day digital life of people. It was also for them to be able to view their own time online.

It was a science project, but it wasn’t, because it had something built into it that read even more data. Somehow, this research was sold onto a terrible company that formed a new company, Cambridge Analytica. And that company was already selling political advice all around the world to some very bad men before they did this. To sum it up, in the song I name every motherfucker involved in this scenario.

The lyrics are about all the companies and how they affected Brexit and the US election in 2016. They obviously didn’t do that alone, that would be giving them too much credit. But things have happened that some people don’t pay enough attention to. Everybody should see the film The Social Dilemma, but then you should also see the documentary Agents of Chaos. You should also read articles and be aware that every narrative is colored in a particular way.

HMS: With “Tick Tock”, you are really drawing attention to the need for people to vote in the US election, and I’m so glad that you, and so many musicians are conveying this message. But you’re in Norway, so tell me about how the US election impacts you. Why is this part of your life?

FS: You probably won’t believe this, but that campaign dominates media, even over here. You won’t believe how many people in Norway were so saddened when Bernie Sanders was out of the race. They were so emotional about it. He represents the way we live our lives in Norway, since that’s the way that Norway has been run for decades. And it works.

I think US internal affairs are well-exposed throughout the world and affects people throughout the world. The recruitment to the Far Right side that you see in the US affects recruitment to the Far Right side of things here, too.

HMS: That makes a lot of sense.

FS: When the most powerful person on the planet basically endorses the Proud Boys, what kind of signal is that to similar organizations throughout the world? It’s really, really, really terrible. The guy is a huge danger to the well-being of the planet. I have two daughters and I don’t find it funny at all to have a person like that in power. The kind of sentiments that he okays, and the language he okays, everything about that individual is such a negative presence.

I met American journalists here in Bergen who tell me they are fifth generation Chinese, and they talk to their parents and grandparents and are so saddened to see how racism blossoms under the reign of this terrible person. He’s a lunatic who will say whatever he needs to say to get voters and the support of certain people. It’s a terrible message to say that it’s okay to be an egocentric egomaniac.

It affects us to such a degree. But also, I the midst of all this insanity, you had a very visible Black Lives Matter Movement, and I was so proud to see it. Here, it was Covid lockdown, and it was basically illegal to attend demonstrations. The police would be present. We said to our daughters, “We’re a little bit afraid of what might happen if you attend.” Because there might be tear gas. That happens even in Norway. But even my children, who are 11 and 14, were like, “We’re going to the demonstration.”

Sometimes when everything is so wrong, like it is now, and the world is so goddamned wrong, it might make people passive. But in this case, there were demonstrations in 2,5000 cities for the George Floyd killing. That hasn’t happened since the 1960s. Even amongst the very young, there’s a political awakening and a need to express your feelings. Even social media has played a part in this.

In that song, “Tick Tock”, there’s a glimpse of hope. I feel a little weird singing a song where I’m encouraging people to vote. But vote for the things you want. Vote for milk in school. But in this case, obviously, it is about the 3^rd of November. For the last four years, we’ve had to endure this individual. I think the last four years of everybody’s life would have been better if not for this individual. If only we can avoid that for the next four years.

HMS: I appreciate you being so outspoken. I also want to point out to readers that they ought to look up Datarock’s history and note how many countries the band has been to and how much they’ve seen of the world. You have the right to speak about other countries based on your observations, and you have the perspective to do that, so I appreciate you doing it.

FS: Thank you. I’ve been to 44 countries. We’ve played in 36. We’ve driven across the US so many times. We’ve been in the US 28 times. All across the world, we look to the US for so many reasons.