Big Data frontman Alan Wilkis’ path to electropop stardom has been an unlikely one to say the least. A Harvard graduate, Wilkis spent years working marketing jobs in the music and film industries, balancing out the nine-to-five life by managing his own independent label, Wilcassettes, and self-releasing a string of fun remixes and original tracks. That changed quickly last year with the release of his first track under the enigmatic name Big Data, “Dangerous,” a wildly anthemic dance track which quickly gained national traction (in no small part due to it’s deliriously gory, unabashedly fun video.) Before he knew it, he was signed to Warner Bros. and looking to bring Big Data’s excellent pop sensibilities to the masses.
At its heart Big Data is about the uncomfortably expanding role that technology plays in our lives, through both the joy of constant immersion and the evaporation of privacy that accompanies it. Shades of that idea run through the excellent debut album 2.0, but Wilkis never lets concept overpower the music, laying out a collection of thoughtful, exceptionally well-produced and, most importantly, accessible tracks. He has also assembled the most impressive list of featured artists this side of a Major Lazer album, courting excellent vocal turns from Twin Shadow, Kimbra, Dragonette, Jamie Lidell and even Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo.
To coincide with the release of 2.0 (stream it below), Big Data is heading out on the nationwide Gimme Data Tour, including a stop at the Sinclair this Wednesday. Ahead of the show, we chatted with Wilkis about his recording process, writing with different collaborators and headbutt-inducing shoes.
Allston Pudding: You’ve said the inspiration for Big Data was the interaction between man and machine and the paranoid sense that come with technology’s increasing integration into our lives. Are there any particular trends or even moments in your life that really unsettled or influenced you in this regard?
Alan Wilkis: I had the concept for the band before Edward Snowden and before a lot of the digital privacy news started coming to light in the media, but those moments certainly drove it home for me. I hadn’t even put out any music at that point. I knew that the band was kind of dark technological space, but the more I saw these stories appearing in the media, the more I realised that this is important stuff to be talking about. It’s timely. It feels like every couple of weeks some story comes out about email hacking or some horrifying thing about our privacy being manhandled. So in a way, I constantly feel that way!
AP: What’s your songwriting process like?
AW: When I work with different vocalists, the process is that I’ll make the instrumental first. I always like to have the skeleton of the song done before I even talk to a vocalist. I like to be able to say “this is where the verse goes, this is where the bridge goes” and have those things worked out in advance. Once I have it and I know who’s going to be singing the song, we’ll get together and start throwing gibberish into the air to find melodies that we like. As we find a part we’ll record the gibberish, sort of “ba baaa ba baaa ba baaa ba” so that we remember how the notes work. When we have that rough outline of the melody, we start to think about the concept of the song; the lyrics, the hooks and that stuff. It’s always instrumental first, then melody and lyrics last.
AP: You assembled an absolutely insane list of collaborators for the album—I sort of couldn’t believe my eyes when I was reading the tracklist! How did you get connected with everybody?
AW: Man, I can’t believe it either! It was really one at a time. As I started to plot out a rough timeline of recording, I made a wishlist of people that I adore. Either through my management or through friends or through people I had met and bands I had met at festivals we were playing and sometimes through my record label, really by any means possible, we would try to reach out to these artists. My life has kind of always worked the way that I’m prepared for quite a lot of rejection and I don’t really care when I get it! I think for every 10 or 20 questions you put out there you get one response back, and that was the approach for this. But I got a surprisingly large number of yesses! (laughs) So it was really just one at a time, trying to get together with people I adored and admired and with Rivers Cuomo, obviously, he’s been my hero since I was a kid! So that’s how it worked, just one at a time. When I knew I was going to work with somebody, I would start working on an instrumental for them.
AP: Are there any tracks in particular that you’re really excited for people to hear?
AW: It’s definitely hard to pick, but there’s a song called “Automatic” that I did with Jenn from Wye Oak, which is probably the most ballady song on the album, and maybe the least singley! (laughs) That one has a special place in my heart and on a personal note is a big one for me. Honestly though, I feel so good about the album and I love all of the songs. I don’t think I could pick just one!
AP: Any plans to sell the Big Data shoes from the “Dangerous” music video as merch? Or are you afraid of the headbutty implications?
AW: (laughs) That’s a good question! When I made that video, at the time the directors and I were able to convince Steve Madden to make us nine pairs of shoes. That’s all they could do before they had to do a proper order. We’re still trying to get them made, but it’s a little tricky. And I would be concerned about the headbutting! There would have to be a legal disclaimer that comes with the shoe. Maybe an agreement people have to sign before they put them on.
AP: Where did the idea for that video come from? I really dug the lack of subtlety.
AW: It started with this idea for a music video that was a running sneaker commercial, but it became evident over the course of the commercial that the shoe makes you do something evil. What does that say about America, basically, that we’re being sold this evil stuff? But that was as far as I could get it. I met these two directors called GHOST+COW Films and the three of us started to brainstorm how to turn it into more of an actual story. They brought the idea of the ad agency behind this shoe and the researchers in the laboratory testing the shoe out, and all of the stuff that would go on behind the scenes for this shoe commercial. They also said that it couldn’t just be evil in general. There has to be a specific thing that this shoe makes you do. That was a funny conversation! We made a pretty long list of possibilities for what the shoe makes you do and some of them were pretty ridiculous. Like, the shoe makes you switch gender! (laughs) Some of them were really dark and too extreme.
We landed at the idea of the headbutt instead because it’s so random and funny that we thought it would come off more as humorous than a horror movie. If the headbutt makes your brain explode, then that’s even more ridiculous! So we wanted to try to hammer home this point of consumer culture being generally terrible, and people sell us things that are bad for us all the time, and they do it with a smile through sex and violence. We wanted to poke fun at that and take it down a peg!
AP: Do you have videos planned for any of the other singles on the album?
AW: Yeah! We’re working on something for “The Business of Emotion” right now. We’re in pre-production for that. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it’s very cool and involves a lot of visual work. We’re also working on this infomercial idea for the album launch that’s really strange and funny. Well, hopefully! We also have another interactive online thing that we’re working on.
AP: On the live show—is the process of transitioning a synthesized song into something for a full band to play difficult, especially with so many different vocalists on the recorded tracks?
AW: When I started the band, I hadn’t played shows since college. I had no interest in being a touring musician. I had a job. I just wanted to be in the studio recording and I didn’t really think beyond that. That’s how I made the first songs for Big Data. But as “Dangerous” kept picking up more and more steam beyond my wildest expectations, the show offers started coming in and it started turning into that. I was thinking “oh man, I’ve gotta get my shit together or else!” I had about about a month to figure that all out, so it was kind of trial by fire!
Guitar is definitely my instrument. I’ve been playing since I was 11. I come from rock band and jazz band land, so I knew that I wanted the show to feel more like a band than a DJ set. I knew that I wanted it to have DJ and electronic elements, though. The thinking initially was to have a rhythm section that is a rock band. So I have a drummer and a bass player, and they wail pretty hard! I knew I wanted to have a female vocalist to sing the higher register stuff and the songs that had a female vocalist on them, and then I would sing all of the male and deeper parts. That worked. It was the best solution at the time and now I kind of love it. The live show has become it’s own thing. Obviously it’s different from the record, but it’s hopefully fun and interesting in its own way. For this new tour we also added a guitar player, so it’s even more of a band.
AP: Do you have plans to hit any music festivals after the current tour?
AW: We’re going to be doing a couple of them over the summer. We’re doing Firefly. I just found out recently that Paul McCartney is playing, so I’m freaking out about that! We’re doing one called Big Guava Festival and we’re doing 420 Fest! You can probably imagine the theme of that festival. (laughs) We’re also going to be doing a NASCAR event, so I’m really curious what that’s going to be like.
AP: The NSA is obviously going to be listening in on this conversation. Anything to say them?
AW: “Hey guys, nice to not hear from you again! Hope you’re enjoying all of my criminal activity!”
Big Data hits the Sinclair this Wednesday, 3/25, with openers On An On and Chappo. Cop your tickets here.