Alec Empire (Alexander Wilke) was born in 1972 in West Berlin.
At the age of ten he was already a street hero of breakdancing.
Empire formed a punk band called Die Kinder, then started listening to
classical music and finally began to experiment with guitar and electronics.
After German reunification,
the stereotypical teenage rebel (and anarchist) found relief in the
raves of East Berlin's underground scene, far removed from West Germany's
commercial rave scene. He first played live at "Tekknozid" in April 1991.
Atari Teenage Riot was started in 1992 when Carl Crack (MC, from Swaziland),
Alec Empire (programming, shouts, drums and bass) and Hanin Elias
(vocals, of Syrian origins),
decided to revolt against the state of the techno scene and launch a creative
bybrid of industrial, metal and electronica, which they defined
(quote) "digital hardcore".
Their singles and EPs were as uncompromising and ultra-aggresive as their
manifestos:
Hetzjagd AufNazis (Hunt Down The Nazis, 1992),
Not Your Business (Phonogram, 1993), which includes
the epic riff of Atari Teenage Riot,
the childish spasm of Not Your Business (Phonogram, 1993),
the metal-industrial fit of Into The Death,
and Raverbashing,
Kids R United (Phonogram, 1993), with the nihilistic sermons
Kids Are United (Phonogram, 1993) and
Deutschland (has gotta die!) (performed with punk's typical
amateurish and noisy verve, augmented with loops and drum-machine),
the singles Raverbashing (DHR, 1994) and
the propulsive, booming techno of Speed (DHR, 1995), replete with
male rap, girlish female counterpoint and male choir,
were mostly boycotted by labels, stores, radio stations.
For those who had missed the singles,
the lyrics on their first album, Delete Yourself (DHR, 1995),
recorded between october 1993 and february 1994,
sounded like they were coming straight out of 1977 punk-rock.
The album's sound, a very noisy and chaotic mix of guitar samples,
distorted breakbeats, 909, manga samples and shouting, and its political
overtones
(with the declared goal of "not to reform the system, to destroy the system"),
virtually reinvented the mission of dance music in the wake of the triumph of
western-style capitalistic values.
The pounding, unrelenting, visceral call to arms of Start The Riot and
the epileptic orgy of title-track, accompanied by a generous selection
of the previous singles, terrorized discos and radio stations around Germany.
Empire's solo career, in the meantime, was much more prolific, including:
the single Tripmen (Force Inc, 1991), the EPs
Yobot (Force Inc, 1992), SuEcide (Force Inc, 1992), with
Terror Worldwide, Orgasm Addict and
the anthemic SuEcide,
the EP SuEcide Pt 2 (Force Inc, 1992),
the singles Das Duell (Force Inc, 1993) and
Bass Terror (Force Inc, 1993),
the EPs Limited Edition 1 (Force Inc, 1993) and
Limited Edition 2 (Force Inc, 1994),
the EP Pulse Code (Mille Plateaux, 1994), etc.
These early recordings, which will be partially compiled on
Limited Editions 1990-94 (Mille Plateaux, 1994),
show a techno artist still searching for his mission, but
Generation Star Wars (Mille Plateaux, 1994), the first proper
Alec Empire album, displayed an angry young man of techno and hip hop intent
on deconstructing the genres through a manic use of distorted breakbeats.
The deluge continued with the
EPs
The Destroyer (Riot Beats, 1994), containing
The Theme (5:51)
Burn Babylon Burn (3:33)
Destruction (5:00)
E.C.P. (4:51),
The Destroyer Pt 2 (Riot Beats, 1994), with
Identity (5:20) and
Nightmare (6:08),
Berlin Sky (Analogue Records, 1995),
The Wipe Out (Chrome, 1996), with
Two Steps Beyond The Terror,
Jaguar (Force Inc, 1996), with
The Past says and
Interplanetary Disco Rhythm,
and Squeeze The Trigger (Riot Beats, 1996), with
Squeeze The Trigger.
The glacial Low On Ice (Mille Plateaux, 1995), which included the
Kraftwerk-ian single 22:24, was more in the vein of Brian Eno's, Aphex
Twin's and Bill Laswell's ambient music (Metal Dub).
Empire's Les Etoiles Des Filles Mortes (Mille Plateaux, 1996), a fully electronic
work and possibly his masterpiece, showed the influence of electronic composer
Karlheinz Stockhausen and veered towards gothic ambient music.
Atari Teenage Riot's
Live At Brixton Academy (1999) contained a 26-minute electronic
improvisation.
Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5 (Mille Plateaux, 1996), and its slower, relaxed,
self-indulging dance music, employed slightly out-of-time beats to
disorient the listener, a sort of cubistic, psychedelic downtempo
(Chilling Through The Lives, My Funk Is Useless,
Many Bars And No Money).
Low On Ice, Les Etoiles and Hypermodern Jazz were
Empire's "ambient" alter-ego. The sonic terrorist surfaced again on
The Destroyer (DHR, 1996),
reissued in 1998 without four tracks and with three new tracks (the first three),
a milestone in the extreme
jungle sound known as "drill and bass". Empire simply applied the ATR ethics
to individual, artistic, creative art. Part creative rhythms and part
political ego, the album created a personality cult of sorts for the
angry young man of techno.
We All Die and The Peak
ripped apart the tender flesh of dance music
with the shocking and blind hatred of a terrorist.
Empire's guitar playing, inspired by thrash-metal and aggro,
weds maliciously with the electronic bombast of the tracks.
Then ATR released the EP with Sick To Death (DHR, 1997), an inferior
work but boasting the supersonic title-track,
and their second album, The Future of War (DHR, 1997).
Not much had changed, as the disc was still dominated by songs like
The Future of War,
Heatwave, Fuck All and P.R.E.S.S., i.e.
wild, hard-driving punk-rock bacchanals, the rhythm is devastatingly loud
and frantic, Elias still screams like Exene Cervenka on speed and
the others concoct ferocious choirs.
Outside the canon, the heavily distorted Death Star
and, above all,
the hip-hop hurricane Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture, with heavy-metal
riffing and loud drumming, half Public Enemy and half Run DMC,
prove that Empire does not rely on only one trick.
If the result has less impact than the debut, it is only because the debut
also included so many of the early singles.
The best of their repertory was then compiled on
Burn, Berlin, Burn (Grand Royal, 1997), which introduced a much wider
audience to the band's criminal career.
In June of 1997, ATR picked up their fourth member, Nic Endo, a
young Japanese-American who specializes in noises.
She is one of the reasons why 60 Seconds Wipeout (DHR, 1999) wants to
sound even harder that its predecessors.
But the tracks do not strike you as fresh and powerful. Empire and his cohorts
are stuck in the time warp of Western Decay (the anthem) and
Revolution Action (the riff). Guest contributions dilute instead of
compress the energy. The extended mixes display Empire's acquired mastery
at studio production, but are a far cry from his early rage.
In the meantime, Empire also released
We Punk Einheit (Digital Hardcore, 1999), credited to the
Nintendo Teenage Robots and entirely composed from samples of videogame music.
The Geist of Alec Empire (Geist, 1997) is a three-disc set collecting
material from the five LPs recorded for Mille Plateaux between 1990 and 1996:
four tracks from Limited Editions 1990-94,
five from Generation Star Wars, five tracks from
Low On Ice, three tracks from
Les Etoiles Des Filles Mortes,
six tracks from Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5 (1996)
five tracks from compilations, and four unreleased tracks.
Alec Empire and Techno Animal's Kevin Martin
have recorded together
The Curse of the Golden Vampire (DHR, 1998),
a nightmarish experiment in free-jazz electronica.
Alec Empire did not collaborate to the second
Curse of the Golden Vampire album,
Mass Destruction (2003).
Alec Empire's Miss Black America (DHR, 1999) does not display the
violence of Atari Teenage Riot or The Destroyer. Empire is busy
reinventing himself as a genius of electronica, with mixed results.
The album returns Empire to his middleground, the
slower, atmospheric variations on Atari's music. Unfortunately, the album's
few good ideas are not fully realized, possibly because the album was recorded
too soon (or too quickly).
On her first solo, In Flames (DHR, 2000),
singer Hanin Elias sets the angry young woman's lyrics of
Girl Serial Killer and In Flames to a futuristic soundscape,
sounding like a Bjork who joined
a guerrilla movement.
Rage (DHR, 2001) is a single recorded by Atari Teenage Riot with Tom
Morello (Rage Against The Machine) on guitar.
Alec Empire's Intelligence And Sacrifice (Santeria, 2002)
is a double album that is divided in a first half of dense, intense, angry,
desperate, violent techno-hardcore music, reminiscent
of Nine Inch Nails
(Path of Destruction, New World Order,
Killing Machine, Addicted To You),
and a second half of experimental
soundscapes (with more than a nod to acid-rock and free-jazz).
Redefine the Enemy (Digital Hardcore, 2003) collects rarities.
Hanin Elias' solo album No Games No Fun (Fatal Rec, 2003)
is old-fashioned disco-punk bordering on synth-pop.
Live CBGB's NYC 1998 (DHR, 2004) documents a performance with
Merzbow.
Alec Empire's Futurist (DHR, 2005) harks back to the age of aggro
and industrial metal
(Nine Inch Nails, Ministry)
with little imagination.
Empire's
The Golden Foretaste of Heaven (Eat Your Heart Out, 2008) harks back
to synth-pop, as if each new solo album was meant as a tribute to a different genre of his youth.
After an eleven-year hiatus (due to the death of
Carl Crack in 2001),
Atari Teenage Riot's Is This Hyperreal (2011) tried to update their
digital agit-prop to the 21st century in grenade-rants like
Activate, but fared much better when trying new forms of sound art like
in
Digital Decay and especially in Collapse of History (pop refrain
and musique concrete).
