ALEC EMPIRE INTERVIEW
by DJ Entox, January '96
(Check
http://www.basenet.net/~skreem for more info
on The Skreem zine, or contact DJEntox@aol.com)
DJ Entox: What projects do you have going on now? You have Atari
Teenage Riot, Jaguar.....
Alec Empire: I'm doing stuff on my own, the hardcore stuff, and
stuff for Mille Plateaux which has a different vibe, not as
aggressive. And I've got this other band, called Zeit..
DJ: And that's your newest project?
AE: It's not a project of mine, I'm joining this band, it was
originally Phillip and Luisa, and I'm doing my part in it. And of
course I'm doing the label Digital Hardcore..
DJ: When did Atari Teenage Riot start?
AE: This started in the beginning of '92.. Carl, hanin and I were
playing together already, I started doing hard acid.. like in 89-90,
I was playing at hardcore raves in Berlin. This was when they were
good. Then I met Hanin and she was doing stuff on her own, then we
got Carl involved as an MC. Then about the end of '91 we were
thinking the techno scene was pretty dead. In Germany we saw things
move in this one direction..
DJ: Like with Mayday and such?
AE: Yeah, you can say after the first Mayday the scene was dead.
It was like "OK, the industry wants to exploit it now" And everyone
was like "Yeah, OK, we can make some money at this!!" It was pretty
dead. Only stupid people go now..
DJ: Carl's English, right?
AE: No, he's from Africa, actually. He moved to Berlin. And Hanin
is from Damascus, Syria. Erm.. Ok, yes.. Then we started to do this
band Atari Teenage Riot because we wanted to get away from this
"rave" project thing.. standing behind machines pressing buttons or
whatever. I always hated this image that if your doing techno you
have to do it without personality. In '91 I really hated this. At
the moment in Germany, everyone is selling personality.. the major
industries always need a face to sell. This thing about "techno
personalities" having no faces, sometimes that's important, but if
you hide behind something and try and say your not responsible for
stuff, that's not good.
DJ: Was the first ATR release the EP that came out on Vertigo in
the UK?
AE: Yeah.. We were the first band from Germany signed directly to
a UK label. We did this project to help get money for Digital
Hardcore because it was the plan to take the advance and do what
we wanted to with it.. We did 2 EP's for them. The record company
spent a lot of money for us. A year later we made them take us out
of contract.. then we started Digital Hardcore a week after we
unsigned from Vertigo.
DJ: I remember seeing little ATR logos spread all
over NME back in '93..
AE: Yeah, that was our idea, actually.. it was the one
good promotional thing we did! No one over there
knew what we wanted.
DJ: When you started ATR, was that when a lot of
the neo-nazi incidents began to happen a lot in Germany?
AE: Yeah, this was one thing.. There was developement with
the wall coming down. But in the late 80's the left side was
in a big dilemma. Everything was going down. Then the wall
came down in the early 90's. This is one reason we started
liking acid, bringing the message of not listening to
politics or commercials on TV, that's why we listened to
techno. When the neo-nazi movement was rising again, this
didn't make sense anymore, to escape from reality. We
talked about all this stuff to German techno DJ's in the
scene and they were always like "Come on, no politics on the
dancefloor, we shouldn't care if Neo-Nazi's burn down
foreigner's houses" or whatever. Hanin and Carl were both
foreigners and they were being attacked all the time.. just
walking down the street in East Berlin. Now in Berlin a lot
of the punks have beaten up the skinheads so they stay in
their own area and don't go out as much. A lot of the
general population now in Germany has been caught up in a
new nationalism movement.. It's a bad thing to see, and as
things were moving in this direction we decided we had to
use vocals to on top of our music to point out what we want
to say. These ravers.. the first generation was like us, more
involved, but the younger generation was all about taking
drugs and only having fun, that's it. You have to get beyond
instrumental music sometimes. Atari Teenage Riot is about
getting information out of Germany.
DJ: You eventually started using more breakbeats with ATR
and yourself, did you see it as a form of protest, using
breakbeats?
AE: I made the first breakbeat record which was released in
the UK in '91.. and in the end of '91 we were using more
breakbeats because this stomping/marching rhythm.. which
was coming from Detroit.. with UR etc. When trance came up
in Germany, and it was played at raves.. raves in Germany
are very bad. If you see events like the Loveparade, it
looks like German's marching again. We wanted to use more
beats from soul music or hip hop. We got a reaction right
away from shops in Germany when "Hetsjagd Auf Nazi's"
(Hunt the Nazi's Down) was released, it was about 2 weeks
after racist attacks in Rostock, a lot of shops didn't want
to distribute the record.
This was very surprising, so many people in the techno
scene were saying "love, peace, unity, respect" or whatever,
but a lot of problems can't be solved by just saying these
four words or whatever. It doesn't make sense. I saw at the
Omen club, which was Sven Väth's club, Turkish people were
not allowed in the club. A lot of Trance DJ's come out of
the Skinhead scene.. a lot of people don't know this in
other countries. A lot of neo-nazi magazines praised the
Loveparade, saying it was a good event because there
were no American or British techno, it was all German, for
German teenagers. The DJ is like a dictator, the person
who guides the masses. Back to the breakbeat issue, yeah
we use breaks most of the time, but we do use straight
bass on our albums, too. But, we use the breaks from the
hardcore scene, not the more dub/ragga influenced jungle
scene.
DJ: Are you still going to use breakbeats?
AE: Yeah, I like very much the punk sound with crashing
cymbals, and you can only really get that out of
breakbeats..
DJ: You sample a lot of punk samples.. like Sham 69 in
"Kids Are United"...
AE: Well, yeah, but I see samples in two different ways,
the samples to show the relationship we share with early
punk, perhaps.. and then there's sampling something for
the sound. For instance on the track "Cyberpunks Are Dead"
on "1995" the grinding sound is a backwards guitar from
the Stooges.
DJ: Are all the artists on DHR out of Berlin?
AE: Yeah.. erm.. Shizuo is originally from Berlin, then he
moved to London, now he's back in Berlin. EC8OR was from
Cologne, but he moved to Berlin, and Christoph de Babalon
is from Hamburg.
DJ: Is anybody involed with DHR squatters or anything
like that?
AE: Well, like a lot of our events were held in abandoned
houses and such, but no one is squatting anymore.. with all
of our equipment we own, it's too risky. A lot of skater
punks, and even German hip hop kids like DHR.
DJ: Did you throw any anti-Loveparade or anti-Mayday
events while they were going on?
AE: Yeah, this Loveparade we did something at the Suicide
Club.. this was a club we got for 4 months, but then it was
closed by the police. The funny thing was was that Westbam
and his bunch were throwing a party and it was ridiculously
priced, like 50 DM's, and only 150 people went there.. but
at the same time we were throwing a party with 700 people!
One thing that is important is that Dr. Motte, who started
the Loveparade, was doing an interview about it for a
newspaper, the interviewers asked if he had "any last words"
about the parade, because it is supposed to be a demonstration
thing so that they don't have to pay money to the state, and
the police and government say that it is only a party, not
a demonstration with a message.
And Dr. Motte said, "We are for Peace, Love and unity in
the world, and my personal message is the Jews should keep
quiet about German history and they should shut up and just
have a good time and stop moaning about things."
Everyone was amazed, and couldn't believe it. Then Dr. Motte
gave an interview on the radio, and tons of people called up
and said, things like 'Fuck You.. what were you thinking?"
etc., but Dr. Motte kept standing behind his statement. But
kids called up saying their weren't going to the Loveparade,
and they said they were going to an Atari Teenage Riot event
instead in protest.. it was interesting! As the interview went
on, Dr. Motte kept saying crap like "Forget about history....
We are Germans we should be proud.." and everyone including the
radio guy was ganging up against him, calling him a fascist!
It was funny. The serious thing about it is that techno is
so big, it is misused by the media and such to make kids not
interested in politics or racism. We did the first Anti-Racism
raves with Force Inc. in '92. Then we did some DHR festivals..
But the good thing is that ticket sales are going down at
Mayday, not as many people are going. More and more people are
realising it's a rip-off....
DJ: Digital Hardcore has two offices, one in Berlin and one in
London. Who runs the London office?
AE: A guy named Peter.. there are 3 people basically running
DHR; me, Joël Amaretto and Peter. Peter was our manager and
he does the On-U-Sound label too.
DJ: We talked earlier and you mentioned you
were trying to work out an American deal for
ATR/DHR..
AE: Yeah, Pete is talking to different people and
I'll know more in the future about that. We opened
for KMFDM when they were in Europe.. they are
from Germany, but living in Chicago, but they
were thinking of starting up a label in the USA.
DJ: What do you think about the American scene? Do you think
kids would be interested in politcs? I think most kids here
are into it for fun..
AE: I think you have to combine the two.. it's not always
like we're frustrated! You see during our shows, maybe
like 50% of people are there just for the music.
DJ: What are the ATR live shows like? Are all three of
you on stage performing?
AE: Yes, we perform all the music live, there is equipment
on stage, it's like a band.
DJ: Have you organized any actual protests or demonstrations?
AE: Well, we support a lot of friend's projects.. for
instance there is this newspaper, "Junge Welt" which I think
translates to "Young World" or something. And the next time
we play in Berlin they will hold a big discussion on whether
the left wing should be more militant, and we are going to
play at that. We could do more of course, but it's so hard
to organize!
DJ: Are there any anti-nazi leagues in Germany you can
write to or anything?
AE: Well yes, but they are illegal.. it is forbidden to
have organizations like that. We are on the list of Neo-Nazi
organizations of "people to watch".. us and Force Inc. We
have gotten attacks and messages on our machine from
Nazis. Some of our shows have even been cancelled.
DJ: When you did the ATR/EC8OR tour recently, where did
you go?
AE: Mainly a lot of cities and small towns in Germany,
we tried to cover everything we could, then we went to
Switzerland and then to Iceland, which was very good..
we are actually pretty big in Iceland! We're played on
daytime radio, even.. We were surrounded all the time
by kids wanting our autograph! This tour hasn't ended
yet, actually. We go to Scandinavia at the end of
February and England sometime as well.
DJ: How much of a distribution do you have with DHR..
for instance # of pressings or whatever?
AE: Well, the ATR stuff sold like 10,000 in Germany,
Austria and Switzerland. We only do 1,000 pressings of
all vinyl, it's a little more underground.
DJ: Is the Bass Terror Squad still together?
AE: You mean the soundsystem thing?
DJ: Yeah... how did that operate?
AE: Well, this was me, Moonraker and Carl Crack,
then we started getting involved with other hardcore
breakbeat DJ's in the end of '93. Bass Terror
still exists with EC8OR, me, Moonraker and Carl Crack,
there were three other DJ's but now they are all doing
like happy hardcore or drum and bass and trance or
whatever.
Copyright © 1996 The Skreem.
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ERkki
and there will be a false leader, he said
trerra@uta.fi