Festival Camp Love.
Perhaps due to their part in NMEs NU-Rave tour of last year, Datarock are being considered as an act who are on the Nu-Rave bandwagon but the band seem quite happy to laugh this off and proclaim themselves to be a Danish heavy metal band. They then quickly threw in a hard-rocking song to prove this point and they weren't massively far off the mark. Theres probably not much of a difference between some musical genres and by dropping down the synthesisers and turning up the guitars and drums, the band managed to cross the genres easily.
The first few songs of the set were pretty chaotic with the band bouncing about the stage but when the set starts to take a proper shape, the quality of their songs shine through. 'Computer Camp Love' stands out, its quirky lyrical wordplay and references to Commodore 64s (in this writers opinion, the coolest computer in the 80s, Spectrums and Amstrads being for social inadequates) and getting far with girls, its an under-rated track that deserves to be heard on a large scale. Live, with every member of the band engaging in the call and response section it almost gave it the feel of "Tell me more, Tell me more" from Grease and was an early indication of the humour and perhaps ironic view the band took.
With lyrics about "Taking a night flight to Uranus" and then the sublime 'Princess' blasting from the stage, the crowd in the tent were having a whale of a time and the R13 enjoyment of the show was greatly enlivened by being handed a pint by a gorgeous girl in a sky-blue dress, so thanks to her in the unlikely even she is reading this. With electro tunes and free beer on the go, Datarock were providing the soundtrack to a brilliant end to the festival and with 'Fa Fa Fa', the bands best known and most commercial hit, bouncing around the sweaty venue there appeared to be no better way to conclude the show.
Datarock thought otherwise and the band were soon jumping about the stage miming to 'I Had The Time of My Life', which was extremely funny and again proved they are a band who don't take themselves too seriously. After the pompousness of Muse, Datarock were the perfect band to inject a bit of fun and hilarity back into the evening and there set went down a treat.