A fixture in the electronic music scene in Toronto since the mid 80s, Dave Rout co-founded Techniques Berlin in 1985,
Started !Bang Elektronika in 1986, as well as his other bands Infor/Mental, The Beautiful Spies, Colecovision, Laundromat, his solo project Datafreq, in addition to many others.
He’s had the privilege to be a member of legendary Canadian synth pop band Rational Youth, both recording an album with them and touring in Toronto, Canada; Germany, Sweden, and England.
He’s also recorded with Images in Vogue, and as Jetlag with Darrin Huss from Psyche.
Dave was also the drummer for Toronto ebm / industrial project Digital Poodle in the 1990s,
and returned to play live for the reunion show in 2022 in Toronto.
Dave started Datafreq in 2002 initially as a DJ project, to put a name to his DJ sets he’d been doing since the late 80s. He performed at a few of the underground Electric Workers parties in Toronto, spinning new wave records while bringing vintage handheld video games into the mix.
In 2004 he bought a vocoder and took Datafreq out as live project, playing shows that same year at Nasa Dance Bar and the El Mocambo in Toronto, and performing at Sonar in Vancouver (with Joe Vizvary from Images in Vogue on synths), as well as an opening DJ for the IIV Reunion that same year. In 2006 he was signed to German label Das Drehmoment, who released his debut album Datafreq album “Fun for the whole Family”.
He played in Berlin that year for the album release party, returning to Germany to perform as Datafreq many times since then, with his last show in Germany at a music festival in Nuremberg in 2018.
He was a frequent DJ in the front room at Nocturne in Toronto from the mid 2000s up to its closing in 2018. He continued to perform live as Datafreq, with the last show in 2022, and continues to DJ to this day.
