Big Data Not Even Menacing

Eccentric goes a long way in my book. It jazzes up the day to day so it's personable. In that vein we get New York based electronic twosome Big Data, comprised of Daniel Armbruster and Alan Wilkis. "Dangerous", to put it kindly, is a misleading title unless it was given to us tongue in cheek. Personality it has in spades. What it doesn't have is lasting appeal. The drumbeat is nothing if not consistent, footsteps that tread self-assured wherever they go. The lyrics scream "I'm a paranoid outcast who really doesn't feel at home in this or any other social scene." Much emphasis ls placed on "creeping eyes". Fill in the blank with the prying eyes looking through the window, voyeurism at its most pronounced. Setting the scene is a buzz saw short keyboard mixture that only adds to the enigmatic nature of the vocals. "Watching all my windows" doesn't even closely resemble someone who's content to let anything slide by without at least some analysis. The video is theater of the grotesque odd. Anybody remember Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face"? Try face without a face and you'll see how Big Data doesn't have a problem stooping to macabre levels to get its point across. The saying says "Variety is the spice of life". Musically Big Data doesn't bother to add much to the table. Synchronized drum and keys and that's the only thing working its way down your gullet. The bridge deigns to inflect serenity into the pot. Merely a distraction from this oddball creation that isn't really going to have many people whispering about it five years down the line. While we're sniffing this specimen it would help my learning curve if someone were to tell me what "take me to the court" is supposed to mean. Is that a basketball court, a court of law, that arena of the weird where people sometimes try to bring utter ruination to a fellow creature's life? Maybe it's a royal court. An interplanetary language translator would have reaped huge dividends but, alas, no such good luck. For a relative newbie act such as Big Data which has only been active since 2013, a larger lure might have brought huger numbers of ears to the festival. The video has to overcompensate for the unsatisfying soft pencil job "Dangerous" does as a single. Big Data's artistic focus is the increasingly complex relationship between humans and technology. The eerie uneasiness takes up residence in the song's unsteady beating heart. On the plus side "Dangerous" doesn't suffer from an identity crisis. Yet there's a crisis touched off by a song that is tentative about asserting said identity. Certain personalities in your life you remember long after the last time you see them. "Dangerous" won't leave anyone thinking its creators are steeled for anything other than a fast fade. It barely breaks the skin. To add to that Big Data seem a little late to the conclusion that man and machine have this increasingly complex dynamic going on. The way new technologies sprout up practically overnight we've long since left complex waving its handkerchief at us on the dock as the rest of us sail off seeking even bigger seismic shifts. In 21st Century America you don't even have time to adjust to the last innovation before the latest one pops into view. Dangerous? No. Toothless? Hate to admit to it but, yeah. These observations leave me declaring that, at least at this moment, Big Data is no big deal.