By George Chen

THE LAST TIME DAT Politics were in San Francisco, I was inexplicably, inexcusably absent. The Internet tells me this was June 2003, and the fact that I can't remember whatever else I could have been doing then means I made the wrong choice. DAT Politics will give me two chances to correct my ways this month: once at the Rickshaw Stop May 28, and again at the new 21 Grand May 30.

It's hard to explain the cultlike enthusiasm that surrounds DAT Politics, and it may be indicative of their particular appeal that it seems to transcend hard lines between distinct genres. They are ostensibly part of an electronic music scene, but their approach has a rockist appeal to the twin drives for chaos and melody. An informal survey (OK, I looked on Friendster – sheesh) bears out this eclecticism.

They are Europeans, and this fact is hard to avoid since they put out records with A Musik and Chicks on Speed, and appear on Mille Plateaux's Clicks and Cuts compilations. They live in Lille, France, which sounds like an art-college sort of town, and they write lyrics in both English and French. They dress up like furries in their album photos, but they do not seem nearly as pretentious about their shtick as their Chicks on Speed label bosses. They are so damn perfect that you want to slap them silly.

Loop de 'Nanoloop'

Everyone inevitably talks about DAT Politics' "video game" sound. That, it turns out, is a product of using Sound Club audio software, which was utilized in '80s video games. They are also on a compilation called Nanoloop 1.0 (Disco Bruit), on which every track was made on synth and sequencing software for Nintendo Game Boy. The resulting sounds are hopelessly, hopefully broken, fucked-up, childlike, and gurgling, and they produce the best feelings ever. It is pop music that you cannot argue with, coated in a cotton candy mess with loose wires sticking out that jolt and prod you at unexpected moments. The sort of tingly sugar-rush feeling that good pop music can give you the first time around is all over the last two DAT Politics albums, 2002's Plugs Plus and 2004's Go Pets Go (Chicks on Speed).

Funny that a group often described as naive or infantile have been playing in some form for more than a decade. Claude Pailliot and Gaëtan Collet started the group while they were in high school, and steeped themselves in the early-'90s indie rock influences of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine before they traipsed off to college in Lille. Pailliot and Collet met Vincent Thierion at school and started playing music together. "We all did some studies in relation with art," Pailliot explains over e-mail during the East Coast leg of their tour. "I [was] studying cinema at college, and the two boys were studying fine art."

"We were using our instruments for their acoustic capacities ... drones, feedback, etc.," she writes. "We also had electronic devices and tapes." In 1995 they started a group called Tone Rec and released four albums on Sub Rosa. In the midst of Tone Rec, DAT Politics developed as an outlet for electronic experimentation free of the restrictions of a traditional rock lineup, and focused on laptop sounds – long before the genre they were pioneering became codified as "glitchcore." They practiced for five years before ever performing out or even coming up with a name.

'No rules'

The transition from Tone Rec to DAT Politics was about going from a somewhat serious post-rock project into a land of "no rules," to paraphrase Pailliot. While earlier DAT Politics records, like Villiger (A Musik), seem like refined experiments in minimal techno compared with those to come, their anti-MIDI technique allows for an organic slippage to occur, making computer music that feels more human. Pailliot explains that both live and in the studio, "there is no MIDI connection between the computers. We really play using our ears and some signs, and we're playing like a band. Each of us has some part to do. We have three laptops, but we also have keyboards, mini samplers, electronic drums, and electronic tools. We also use vocals. Just try to keep us busy!" The group started their own label, Ski-pp, which has worked with former fourth DAT Politics member Emeric Aelters, Goodiepal, Nathan Michel, and Felix Kubin, who also does vocals on Plugs Plus.

To top all the band-cest and tie this in to San Francisco-centric theorizing, I should note that many Bay Area peeps and expats appear all over these last two albums. Cameo-crazy Kristin Erickson, a.k.a. Kevin Blechdom, does her banjo-meets-Broadway thing on Go Pets Go's third track, "No Fairy Tale." Both Blectums sing on "Pie," Plugs Plus's third track, which may be the best song ever about poisoned pies. This also goes with my theory that the most important track on any album is the third one, as most listeners will start to drift off if you don't deliver the goods by then.

Plugs Plus also features Matmos singing the contents of an actual letter they received, on "Pass Our Class." Asking if there's any background to all this intermingling, Pailliot concedes, "I guess that we're all some kind of hedonist people, compared to a lot of European electronic music at this time. San Francisco people like Kid 606, Blectum from Blechdom, Matmos have a kind of rock 'n' roll spirit, which we have in common. We just wanted to make the electronic music less austere! When we all started to do music, there were not many 'playful' electronic projects."

"Playful" is putting it mildly. DAT Politics sneak in snippets of studio discussion, especially on "Go Pets Go" and "Pie," laying bare a process that is usually concerned with concealing mistakes. And though they claim their music is not intended as a joke, they are definitely invested in humor as a mode: "Pie" chops up the laughter of Bevin Kelley, a.k.a. Blevin Blectum, into a stuttering rhythm pattern. They also have the audacity to read out the credits for Go Pets Go in two languages on its closing track. And someone – not me – should write an article about the Freudian implications of simulating flatulence sounds in electronic music. There's something in there, I swear.

So, in the middle of making them sound like some sort of joke band, or worrying that I am, I realize "Bees're Bees," the only song on Go Pets Go with an actual guitar, has some of the best lyrics ever, comparing in one moment the birds and bees and the human mating dance, and in the next bringing home the futility of it all while fading a lite-rock ballad into a weird audio hiss. "I'm looking for lovely flowers / Looking for food, taking hours / No time for love, work for peanuts / Flyers / Pretend you are friends of ours / Dating, laying, meetings, dinners / No time for fun on Mother Earth." If I've done my job, you can tell the difference between what is a joke and what is not. Or at least you will want to find out for yourself.

DAT Politics play with Phthalo, Sagan, Printed Circuit, and DJ Ryan P Sat/28, 8 p.m., Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, S.F. $8. (415) 861-2011.

To purchase the music of DAT Politics featured in this article, visit iTunes: