When Datarock released their debut 2005 full-length album, Datarock Datarock, their exceptional electronic dance/post-punk hybrid swiftly earned them international acclaim. (In fact, one of the singles from that release, “Fa-Fa-Fa,” is so infectious that it has been used in numerous films and commercials throughout the years.) With his concurrent solo career, frontman Fredrik Saroea proves that he’s got even more innovative ideas in his musical arsenal: his third album, Lucid Dream (which just came out in October), veers from acoustic-based singer-songwriter tracks to marathon-length bossa nova explorations – along with contributions from BIT20 Ensemble, the virtuosic Norwegian chamber orchestra (with whom Saroea previously collaborated on his 2022 album, Rona Diaries: The Chamber Versions). During a recent video call from his home in Bergen, Norway, Saroea tells The Big Takeover about the unique inspiration for this album, how he stays inspired, and what he thinks of the legacy he’s created so far.
How did you know it was the right time to do another solo album, as opposed to one with Datarock?
FREDRIK SAROEA: It was so weird. Just as Datarock released Media Consumption Pyramid [in 2023], I was asked by the National Theatre [in Oslo, Norway] to play the main character of Woland in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Are you familiar with the book? It’s in a lot of international lists of the best novels of the last century. It’s an amazing book. So I’m asked to play the main part and compose the music for [the play version]. Absolutely insane. And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it, but do you really want me to? I never played in any theater production. That will be a big risk.” But then they went, “Yeah, whatever, let’s go!” So I was taken into this very, very different world than rock and pop music. And I have to admit that I had some extra time, and what felt most natural was to work on this kind of material. And in fact, one of the songs [on Lucid Dream] was actually even part of the theater play. Everything about the book took me back to studying literature, because to write the music, to play a part in a theater production like that, you have to dig into all the background material – it’s almost like writing a thesis on a book. And that took me back to the days of being a student. And the kind of music that ended up on Lucid Dream was more the kind of stuff that I was very much into when I was young. I mean, we grew up on Simon and Garfunkel, so it’s no wonder there’s a little bit of that kind of sound in the songwriting, too.
What inspired this album title?
FREDRIK SAROEA: Me going on an airplane, 4:30 in the morning without any sleep, and actually lucid dreaming for the first time in my life. And I’m like, “Oh my fucking God, in this awake dream, this very complex city landscape is solid, like it’s for real.” That’s how simple that was, the title. Have you ever experienced it? It’s bonkers.
Why did you decide to work with BIT20 again on this album?
FREDRIK SAROEA: Well, I kind of felt a little bit weird about the fact that everything we did on the Rona Diaries album weren’t songs that were written for a chamber orchestra. It was written to be performed on guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, and whatnot. So I wanted to write material specifically to work with these guys because I thought they were amazing. BIT20 are basically the national contemporary art music ensemble in Norway. They’re the best of the best of classical musicians in Norway. And also, knowing that I was going to play with them allowed me to write completely different compositions. So if you listen to the opening track of Lucid Dream, the title track, that’s basically an eleven minute instrumental bossa nova suite. You couldn’t record that with drums, bass, and guitar. That’s really specifically written for them. When you’re fortunate enough to work with musicians like that, it’s such a trip. You wouldn’t really assume that what you wrote could come out like that. You can always make things sound the way you want with synthesizers; you can always make a guitar sound OK. But a viola or a violin or a cello? I mean, the level they’re at, they can make the simplest of melodies sound amazing thanks to their interpretation.
Photo by Alice Teeple
It seems like a lot of artists run out of good ideas after a while, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you. How do you avoid that particular pitfall?
FREDRIK SAROEA: It’s so much easier for me to sit down and write music than pretty much anything else in life. There’s so much creativity that just bubbles up very easily. I think most things in life are pretty hard, but I think there’s something so natural about music. When it’s happening, it’s so automatic. Like Brian Eno says, “Music writes itself.” But it’s very hard for me to try to force something that is within a scheme that I think people would like. If it’s completely free creativity, it will just bubble up and come out naturally. But it’s very hard for me to try to sit down and write lyrics, for instance, where I think, “People are going to like this.”
But what you’re doing must resonate with people or you wouldn’t have had a career that has lasted this long…
FREDRIK SAROEA: We [in Datarock] always regarded ourselves more as music fans then musicians. And it’s really absurd, probably, that we still don’t regard ourselves as musicians. We’re really just music fans who make our own tribute songs to everything we love, and sometimes we’re very open about references. So I think we appeal to a secret society of music fans who can pinpoint, “I know what they did there – I know that reference.” One of the weirdest things we did was on the previous album, we have an opening beat which is just a bass drum [on] a song called “Love in the Face of Darkness.” And the drum beat is a pattern from “Blue Monday” by New Order. It’s so odd. You have to be severely autistic to pick it up, you know? But I think a lot of people kind of are. It’s a little secret sign: “We’re the same.”
What do you think about your legacy as you look back on your career?
FREDRIK SAROEA: When Datarock started touring, we ended up playing 36 countries, so we saw ourselves in the audience, and we felt that was so rewarding. These were primarily nerds. Smart kids. And not necessarily the guys who would want to go to the fun, annoying party. But when they came to Datarock shows, it was kind of like the Revenge of the Nerds [film]. Like, that’s the most fun party. And you look at an audience and you know there’s a lot of people there that don’t necessarily like their colleagues or their classmates or whatever; they come [to the concert] with the two or three friends that they have and that’s it. And you look at an audience and you see people come to connect in this joint hour of fun. Just seeing hundreds and hundreds of faces being happy, that’s great – especially when you can see that they’re smart. I’m so proud of that. I’m so happy that we went around the world and made probably millions happy for an hour. And in the process, of course, we made ourselves happy. We had a great time and befriended so many people, we can’t believe it. Well, I hope that’s our legacy: that we made a lot of people happy.
