Red

VINYL FORMAT. As an album, Red is a thoroughly unashamed love letter to the influences that made Datarock what they are today. DEVO, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruki Murakami, Don Delilo's White Noise, Scott Walker and the works of John Hughes and Peter Greenaway are all referenced, but "True Stories" is the most explicit: a song made out of nothing but song titles. Talking Heads' song titles.

It works as a tribute precisely because it plays the kind of mind-games with authorship that classic Talking Heads - who once wrote a song based on an NME review describing what Joy Division sound like; a band they'd never heard - pioneered back in the day, and not just because it sounds like Talking Heads. If anything, Datarock's music seems to be informed less by the way Talking Heads sound, as much as the way David Byrne dances.