DAT Politics

If you've been basking in the glow of grease oozing from your glad-they-renamed-'em "freedom" fries the past few months, find something else to do. Not just because the computer popsters (pop stars?) of DAT Politics come from Lille, a rough, industrial city from the French-Belgian border, and are thus quite...

By Piotr Orlov

May 29, 2003

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If you've been basking in the glow of grease oozing from your glad-they-renamed-'em "freedom" fries the past few months, find something else to do. Not just because the computer popsters (pop stars?) of DAT Politics come from Lille, a rough, industrial city from the French-Belgian border, and are thus quite likely to respond to any surrender-monkey harangues with a deserved tongue-lashing. But because the politics of dancing that Gaëtan Collet, Claude Pailliot and Vincent Thierion espouse hardly fit the profile-dossier of the coalition of the willing.

Having started out as laptop anarchists, the DAT Politicians have been expanding their appeal into other constituencies. There's fun to be had invoking seemingly light minimalists like Trio and the Flying Lizards; so they have it. There's also strength in the paradox of making smiley-faced, bobble-head beats, while constructing an all-encompassing, punk-as-fuck digital middle finger to the world of formalism, joining Bay Area experimental sampler-pop programmers like Matmos and Blectum From Blechdom for art critique poses as well. All the while, the DATs retain those gorgeous smiles on their Euro-trash faces and continue to shake their asses. Because eschewing those greasy potato sticks leaves a soul with more time for important things, like revolutions of the mind.

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