Big Data
2.0
(Warner Bros)
Big Data are a New York electro-pop outfit led by producer Alan Wilkis but also featuring characters such as Ghost + Cow, a pair of "conceptual thinkers". If you abide by the rule "Thou shalt not question Brooklyn hipsters", this second album is a gloriously cool confection of thunderous bass lines and jagged synth riffs, with the hit Dangerous, featuring indie rockers Joywave, good enough to reach No 1 in the US Alternative Chart.
If not, you'll treat its claim to be a series of "meditations on the intersection between technology and emotion" with scepticism and remind yourself that Kraftwerk were doing all this decades ago.
There was no internet then, of course, so Big Data's source material is certainly fresh, and typical of the subject matter they make music from are Facebook's attempts to alter its users' moods (The Business Of Emotion) and Edward Snowdon's spat with the NSA over secret leaked documents (Snowed In).
All this gives the record intellectual backbone, though it hardly needs it to stay upright: Wilkis is, above all, a consummate pop producer and his peerless list of collaborators - Twin Shadow, uber-cool Brit Jamie Lidell and Rivers Cuomo of cult 1990s act Weezer - embellish some pretty consummate pop songs.
Barry Didcock
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