JUKEBOX: "Dangerous" by Big Data

Big Data: Instrumentalist/Producer Alan Wilkis, Vocalist Adam Armbruster

Hey guys, Lia here with an unorthodox group called Big Data.

A friend of mine turned me on to this song and so I thought I would share it with all of you guys! Big Data is actually a cool electronic pop duo that makes music centered on the hazards of the Internet age. They don't have any albums so this song is from their EP, 1.0 - EP. Alan Wilkis, one of the guys of Big Data, is an established music producer that has created official remixes of songs from the Who, Temper Trap, and Phantogram. I would describe him as an artist who works through music rather than a musician. Adam Armbruster, on the other hand, is a musician that's part of a band called Joywave. Big Data's sound is, well, electronic pop. In my honest opinion, electronic songs all sound similar because of their heavy use of sampling and computer-generated melodies, but that doesn't mean I reject the legitimacy of their sound. It takes talent to do what artists/groups like Big Data do.

"Dangerous" sends an interesting message to listeners. I read this interview from chicagonow.com of Big Data explaining what Dangerous was all about. That's where I was introduced to the interactive music video they set up on thefacehawk.com. The website asks you to log on to your Facebook, where (through cool logarithms and such) they make a hawk (like the bird) out of your statuses, photos and other information. They promise not to post anything on your behalf or steal info because it's just for fun, but I thought it was pretty clever that the message of the song explores the 'cyclical voyeurism in the digital age' while the facehawk video visually shows you the information that Facebook keeps, which spans years back. "Dangerous" makes you think, how much sensitive information am I leaking on the Internet through the social media sites I engage in? Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter keep everything you put out, so be careful what you reveal on the Internet.

This song has a certain paranoid vibe about it, but it's kind of sexy to listen to. The official music video (not the interactive one) is so weird, but in a really funny, gory, kind of sexual way. Just watch it. You'll question why you're watching it, but it'll entertain you for a couple of minutes, so there's that.