Anthony Hamilton 
If you’re familiar with Fredrik Saroea’s disco-punk band, DATAROCK (famous for their 2005 breakout single, “Fa-Fa-Fa”), you might associate the Norwegian songwriter mostly with his witty lyrics and retro-styled dance arrangements. But Saroea has lately been following another track, working with four musicians from Norway’s own BIT20 Ensemble (Martin Shultz, violin; Liene Klava, viola; Agnese Rugevica, cello; and Johannes Wik, harp) to integrate classical sounds into his songs.
His two newest releases, “Bergheim,” and “Understatement Lovesong” were both recorded live with the ensemble at Norway’s Grieg Hall during the Bergen International Festival in May of 2021. The movement away from dance-beats and electronic instrumentation puts Saroea in league with the likes of David Byrne or even Danny Elfman, who both draw on the familiar syncopated rhythms and repetitive melodies of their pop music backgrounds, but who work many of their arrangements around classical instrumentations.
While Saroea’s “Understatement Lovesong” still flirts with pop conventions, featuring his romantic crooning vocals over pizzicato strings, “Bergheim” departs entirely; the two-and-a-half minute track, which opens with a series of descending Steve-Reich-esque guitar chords, Saroea says, “is a wordless sentimental gaze back,” to the Bergheim Cinema where he spent much of his childhood. The track appropriately bears a cinematic touch of nostalgia, especially with Shultz and Klava exchanging beautifully sonorous melodies on violin and viola.
We recently had a chance to put Fredrik Saroea under The Probe…
1) If you found a cockroach in your rehearsal space, would you run or would you kill it?
I would put a glass on it and give it a new home 🙂 Not my business to tell who’s supposed to live where …as long as they don’t touch my snacks! Those snacks are mine!
2) Does anyone in the band like to play practical jokes? If so, what’s one of the all-time best ones?
Hmmm. We once toured with Ladytron and thought they were kinda dicks – in a friendly way – so we bought tons of blow-up dicks and dropped the balloons on them from the balconies during their show – in a friendly way. We did go out drinking together after the show though, so we’re cool. I guess that joke makes us dicks too…
3) What’s the last gift you received?
The last time I got a proper psycho nice gift it was an acoustic Martin HD20 made for their 175th anniversary. That’s the one I play on the new album featuring BIT20 Ensemble – on songs like “Bergheim”. And the odd thing is that I got it from my accountant – who also lets us use the basement of his office building (an 1890s villa next to my home) as a studio and rehearsal space – free of charge! I bought my very first guitar from the tiny little guitar store he had when I was about 11 or 12, and he doesn’t have kids who play any instruments – so I guess he just wanted to pass on one of his many, many guitars of that nature to a “kid” so to speak. He just said “here you go, just make some nice music on it” – so I made Rona Diaries and the upcoming album 🙂
4) If you could pick one thing about yourself that you’d like your fans to know, what would it be?
That I – despite the fact that I undoubtedly must seem completely mad in the red suit – am a very boring person in “real life”. I have a University Degree in Arts from the early days of touring with DATAROCK, I’m married to my uni “sweetheart” (that I’ve been together with ever since we got together in 2002) – now a lawyer for the University Hospital over here – that I have two daughters (12 & 15), and am so relaxed and dull that I prefer staying at home as much as physically possible – even though I, of course, visit my oysters, pizza & natural wines joint Hoggorm as often as I can. That guy you see on stage with DATAROCK? That’s a guy I’m not sure I’d even let into my house!
5) What music are you listening to lately?
Meditative stuff like random tape-loop artists, old Eno ambiance, tons of Talking Heads and David Byrne (I’m finally attending his American Utopia on Broadway in February 2022!), the new DATAROCK tracks (as we’re finishing the upcoming album with Mark Rankin in Los Angeles), the same 70s and 80s stuff I’ve always been listening to, and, of course, “newcomers” like IDLES, Shame, Fountains DC, Kelly Lee Owen and a few Norwegian artists like +plattform, Smerz and Jenny Hval. Every now and then, I’ll crank up the volume on dear friends like Kvelertak or Gaahls WYRD, but mostly it’s pretty relaxed stuff nowadays. That might explain the upcoming album ft. BT20 Ensemble.
Hehe.
Watch: Fredrik Saroea’s official video for “Bergheim”
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