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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.. |
SKREEM Interviews - Thanks to: DJ Entox.
Here are DJ Entox's interviews with Alec Empire from the SKREEM.
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 agressive. 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 rythym.. 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 "Hetzjagd 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. |
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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-Loverparade 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 facist! 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 realizing it's a ripoff....
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 were 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 illeagal.. 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 Nazi's. 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.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.. we know. We already did an interview with Alec Empire a few issues ago. But recently, Atari Teenage Riot and Alec himself have been getting more and more popular.. and more and more overexposed. After DHR signed a deal with Grand Royal (actually owned by Capitol), ATR went on a couple tours of the US. The first was with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion & the most recent was with Beck and the Cardigans. Of course the latter tour made us go "What?? What crack addict booked this??". Soon, ATR began appearing everywhere, and one could probably start playing a "six degrees of ATR" game as it seemed everyone in the music shitbiz was getting a connection to the Atari's. So when ATR stopped by Boston on the Beck tour, it seemed in order to do an interview to see what's really up with them. We would've done one with everyone from ATR, but Carl was asleep & Hanin was busy being pregnant.. so we asked Alec some things. (for some reason the tape came out really fucked so this is as best as I could interpret it)
DJ Entox: Hmm.. where do we start? First up, why the hell are you touring with the Cardigans & Beck??
Alec Empire: You really wanna know? Well, the album was just coming out.. and Beck had asked us to tour with him. We thought it would be good, I like what Beck is doing.. erm, not so much The Cardigans, though. We heard about that like 3 days before we got here and this really pissed us off. So, we've been playing to some very weird audiences.. but we like this sort of confrontation!
DJ: So, what do you Really think of Grand Royal? (for the underground
audience..)
Alec: what like, how the label is...?
DJ: yeah.. how they treat you.... whatever..
Alec: um, I think it's good. I don't know about the other artists, really. I think the music could/should be more extreme, but on the other side it's very hard to finance this. But working with them I think is at the moment the only way to get stuff out over here. You could always buy us on import.. very expensive.. this is the other choice!
DJ: In talking with the American press, do you think they are trying to sell you as some sort of new thing? Do you get that feeling from them?
Alec: Not so much, because most of the people ask us, you know.. First they thought that but then they see that I've been doing this for years, it's not like we just came up and nothing happens next. I know there's that tendency about why people are picking up on this now with this whole techno thing going on here in the USA. We had this happening in '93 in Europe. We wouldn't make compromises to be involved with (inaudible). I think in a few months it'll come down again.. you know what I mean? I don't really care about these fake people. With our music, it's not really important if some hip magazine says it's cool to listen to us because the audience they have, they probably wouldn't get into this stuff anyway. They might for a little bit, but they'd go back to the other stuff.. (laugh) or whatever.. like Tricky or something..
DJ: Oh god... What's the dumbest thing that someone has told you..
Alec: like in an interview..?
DJ: yeah, or like people who come up and say "oh yeah.. ATR.. er.. blah blah
crap crap"
Alec: Hmmmm.. I don't know. When people come to us after shows, I'm always surprised they like the ideas. Most of the time people come up to us who know the stuff already. It seems that people just see we're serious.. so they just don't judge it, it's too strange for them. They feel like they wanna describe it, like "It's techno punk.. erm, It's like good & bad punk.. like Prodigy is The Sex Pistols and you're like bad Exploited punk" or whatever.. very stupid. I guess this was a compliment..?
DJ: With people coming up to interview, did you ever just say "Fuck Off!"?
Alec: Let me think.. that doesn't very often happen. Erm, I remember one time in the past somebody faxed me these really stupid questions like "do you think your music has energy" and crap.. I told them I wouldn't answer them. I didn't care so much..
DJ: You said you were probably going to move away from the drum'n'bass/jungle sound DHR sort of got known for..
Alec: Yeah.. I still like the breakbeats, but I was talking about like Chrome, or experiments with styles that are connected. It's like with this Panacea guy, he does stuff like that. I don't think that's happening in drum'n'bass stuff is really good. I mean, I could do 3 EP's just jungle or whatever.. you know what I mean, but I'd rather do something else. I still like these kind of beats, but I think DHR has found it's own direction. I think we're where we wanted to be like 2 years ago. The drum'n'bass scene is all one type of beat.. very divided into a certain category. I think this is very boring.
DJ: Do you think if you get bigger in the USA, or so, are you going to take the music even more extreme?
Alec: Well, we felt like that about our newest album. It wasn't really an idea to make it that way, we just did what we liked. But if you compare the two albums it's very different. Live, we sound a bit more like the new album anyway. For us we didn't really feel it was so much of a big step. This new album has more lyrics on it.. it's not just something like "Start The Riot" anymore, which is more a shout.. we felt we had to have some more dimension. It was getting kind of dumb just shouting something without any question,
just all these stupid people like, "Yeah, Riot..!"
DJ: yes like "Come on.. say fuck! Do it!". So would you say you pretty much hate the American music scene? (big laughs all around)
Alec: erm.. I dunno... are you talking about bands, or..?
 |
DJ: well, maybe
just with touring with Beck, the "big people"..
like dealing with touring people, booking people, there's
all this crap you have to go through, like I always get
"we don't know if you can see the band.. maybe for
15 mins.". The star mentality.... Alec: It's good that Grand Royal for America is taking care of stuff like that... It's pretty simplified, like if we want to do something one way, they might not want us to that certain way, so they just say that we can't do it. (I think this is what was said.. -ed.). We always have to fight about volume.. that's one thing. like sometimes we can't let the dB's go over some amount or something....they want you very quiet. |
DJ: (somehow conversation turned..) Do you think it's funny that your on a major label here in the US? With Capitol....
Alec: Yeah, OK, but if you see it that way and you see in Germany, our distribution is through Alternation, which is Intercord.. All the indies we dealt with didn't do very well with distribution, some people don't know what they're doing. As long as we keep it controlled it's OK..
DJ: Would you say you're doing the Great Rock N' Roll Swindle of the 90's?...
Alec: Well, we did something like that when we were signed to Phonogram and took all the money to start DHR.. (laugh)
DJ: What would make you leave Grand Royal.. like what would they do that would make you want to leave?
Alec: Erm, things aren't too bad, they are OK. They aren't trying hard to force ideas on us. With Phonogram it was worse, they had lots of dumb ideas. We always explain to people with DHR.. like, we were in Japan and some guys from Sony came up to us and were like "yeah.. so How do these records? (snarly voice) these sounds.. what are you doing?" and then we say "we do nothing.." . it doesn't make sense for me to, for example, tell Shizuo that he has to make a certain sound, like "ATR are selling more records, you need
to sound like us."
DJ: So, What do your parents think of all this, since you sometimes live with them in Berlin?
Alec: They are just amazed I can travel around the world playing all this noise.
DJ: Are you an only child?
Alec: yes.
DJ: Me too, that's the best.. that way you get more stuff! (Laughter all around)
After that point, the interview turned into various chit chat stuff. At one point Alec and I debated about what it would be like to live with a twin version of each other. We decided we'd drive each other crazy. Anyway, when Alec & Shizuo were in San Francisco on their solo leg of their American tour, our man on the scene Chris Polaris cornered both of 'em (see the Shizuo inty!) and asked Alec a few very relevant questions like,
Polaris: What's your favorite color?
Alec: Red.
P: What did you dream about last night?
A: About me being sick the next day.
P: Sick with what?
A: I felt like shit in the dream and I feel like shit today. The dream became true.
P: What do you think is making you sick?
A: America. More American food I think. Mainly the mid-west like Oklahoma.
P: When do you feel most alive?
A: When I have sex.
P: So you feel alive very often then, right?
A: I hope so or do I look not alive any more?
P: What's your next record?
A: A solo album on DHR. More noise, different beats, just a new direction.
I'm singing on a few tracks too.
P: What are you singing about?
A: More personal stuff. It's political too but different to ATR.
P: Where do you get the ideas for your music?
A: From my life really. It's very simple. Everything that's around me goes into the machines.
P: What do you have in your refrigerator at home?
A: A 303 and some food.
P: Are you letting the 303 freeze?
A: Ya, because it sounds harder. I don't know why but it does.
P: Where's your favorite place to be?
A: Between hotels.
P: On the ground or in the air?
A: In the air. I like flying.
P: What do you think about when you're flying?
A: I'm thinking about how I'm not a resident anywhere anymore really.
P: Where do you want to be in ten years?
A: I don't exactly know. I want to be flexible. Maybe I'll be into parachuting or something.............
Either to their advantage or to their disadvantage (more likely) ATR appear on the AMP compilation put out by those butchers of the creative MTV that also features our favorite target practice faces like Josh Twink & those Chemical Bores among others. Of note here is the press release that came along with the compilation, and the description of ATR.. er, excuse me, Alec Empire:
".. Lastly, off in his own world, ALEC EMPIRE (aka ATARI TEENAGE RIOT) has made a cottage industry for himself over the past few years. Under various different guises he has been turning out electronic music than spans the spectrum from beautiful to dissonant. Here, in his Atari Teenage Riot get up, he gives a slice of music that owes as much to punk as it does electronica. Firmly rooted in the DIY ethic of years gone past, Atari Teenage Riot takes the noisy, lo-fi ethic of punk rock & marries it with the beat driven
aggression of German techno to quite an effect." I'm sure Hanin Elias and Carl Crack appreciate the attention and recognition given here. Oh well, yet another attempt by MTV to find the one marketable star in what actually is a group project. What else could you expect from a worthless commercial corporation? Is the break-up soon or are we just apocalyptic..? Well anyway, if you didn't know yet, ATR's latest tour starts up in July with Rage Against The Machine and Wu-Tang Clan. The tour we want to see next is ATR vs. the Spice Girls.. now that would ROCK!
Then the interview goes into a segment from the Rollerderby interview...