Big Data

Alan Wilkis, the Harvard-educated producer based in Brooklyn, directs Big Data, an electropop endeavor centered on the friction between people and machines. Early input arrived from vocalist Daniel Armbruster, Rajeev Basu in the interactive/hacker role, and GHOST+COW on visuals. In the closing years of the 2000s and opening stretch of the 2010s, Wilkis gained notice as a remix specialist for Temper Trap on “Sweet Disposition,” Fenech-Soler on “Demons,” and Yelle on “Que Veux-Tu,” each time building entirely new instrumentals around the preserved original vocals. Big Data coalesced in 2012 and surfaced the next October with the four-track EP 1.0 on Wilkis’s Wilcassettes label. That same year he also released PRINTS, a parallel four-track set assembled from sessions with Armbruster’s Joywave, the Kickdrums, Paul Holmes, and World War. By year’s end Big Data followed with 1.5, eight reworkings of the 1.0 cut “Dangerous.” The track appeared in the 2014 films Veronica Mars and Earth to Echo. Shortly before “Dangerous” reached number one on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart that summer, Wilkis signed with Warner Bros. Records, prompting Big Data and Armbruster to perform the song on Late Night with Seth Myers. Warner issued the ten-track debut album 2.0 in spring 2015; it includes “Dangerous” and adds vocals from White Sea, Jamie Lidell, Kimbra, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, Dragonette, Bear Hands, and Twin Shadow.