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Rage Against the Machine, Atari Teenage Riot |
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Empire says that he disliked Kraftwerk when he was growing up, and that he'd never heard any records by respected kraut-rock bands like Neu! and Faust until a friend in New York played them for him recently. |
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German techno trio Atari Teenage Riot prepares for battle. Empire Strikes Back: Alec Empire (bottom left) fights the power in the new Germany.
Skinheads and neo-Nazis might appear to be the likely audience for Atari Teenage Riot's music, with its nightmarish combination of furious, hyper-techno beats and confrontational vocals. Yet today's young fascists, normally enamored of anarchic sonic assaults, dislike the German trio. Alec Empire, the band's electronic whiz and volatile spokesman, has a fascinating theory about this. "It's strange, but maybe it's the way the music is programmed," he says. "At first, we thought there might be a danger, because the same thing happened when punk turned into oi! and then into Nazi oi! But there's a difference in the way [ATR's] music sounds on the frequencies, and music in itself is a political thing." Empire and his bandmates, lead shrieker Hanin Elias and MC Carl Crack, don't exactly welcome a fascist presence at their shows; during a 1996 performance, Empire used a jagged broken bottle to send an especially pointed message to a neo-Nazi who'd mounted the stage and given a Hitler salute. Adding to their music's subliminal aspect and the warning that comes with a bloodied face, Atari Teenage Riot's lyrics lambaste the kind of narrow-mindedness that has led to Europe's anti-immigrant fervor and America's omnipresent racism. In songs like "Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!)," "Destroy 2000 Years of Culture" and "Start the Riot," these angry diatribes are set to dizzying breakbeats, punk-rock guitar samples and sundry beeps and buzzes. It's some of the most intense music ever recorded--a collision of hip-hop's street rage, punk's energized ennui and techno's cold, apocalyptic rush. If Brian Eno could call an album of ambient excursions Music For Airports, Atari Teenage Riot could have titled its record Music For Futuristic Revolutions. Instead, Empire came up with the pithier Burn, Berlin, Burn! But he does have an apt name for the record label he founded, Digital Hardcore, which releases albums by like-minded bands EC8OR, Shizuo and Sonic Subjunkies; these and ATR's own albums are released in the United States through Grand Royal. Empire doesn't spend much time in DHR's offices, however, as he now calls London home and can't stay in Berlin for too long because he lacks an identity card and avoided the country's mandatory two-year military service. He says he doesn't like going back anyway; the city's underground arts scene has withered since the heady days when the Wall came down, and the government has moved its headquarters back to Berlin from Bonn. "It's like a dead city," he explains. "It was very creative [in the early '90s], with all these small clubs and people doing art and music. But the government cleaned the city because Berlin has become the capital again. So that's all gone now." While in his late teens, Empire had hoped that Germany's reunification would lead to a social and political enlightenment that drew from the merger of two systems. His idealism was soon squashed, however, as right-wing groups attacked and, in some cases, burned foreigners, the Conservative government responded feebly if at all, and corporations and politicians did little to combat the drastic economic disparity between the two parts of the formerly divided nation. His disgust for Germany's situation--coupled with his boredom with conventional, apolitical techno music--led Empire to form ATR with two people who had a similar sense of rage. Elias, a native Syrian, and Crack, from Swaziland, lived amid Germany's xenophobic environment, where neo-Nazis and even Conservative politicians continually rail against immigrants. The trio's debut single, "Hunt Down the Nazis," was boycotted by the major German record store chain. ATR's 1995 debut, Delete Yourself, didn't get Empire invited to dinner at Chancellor Kohl's, but a New York City show in support of the album led to a call from the Beastie Boys' Mike D., who soon signed ATR to Grand Royal. Now Empire, through his own band, his solo work and the output of his DHR roster, can share his controversial views with a wider audience. And he says he has no intention of softening his opinions, which include an appreciation of the work of the Red Army, a German terrorist faction accused of murdering Conservative politicians and business leaders in the 1970s. "I know the past," he says somberly. "My grandfather died in a concentration camp. Of course I have to do something against it. I have a lot of respect for the Red Army, people who risked their lives to make a change. I think we would be on a much more right-wing level already if people wouldn't have done anything in the '70s or '80s." So does this mean he supports "Not all the time," he says. "But I wouldn't exclude it, because the state and the government are using it against us.... On a peaceful level, you don't get anywhere. Even if you want to do a left-wing magazine in Germany, the police come to the office and confiscate all the computers. Freedom of speech is just a joke, and it's a fake democracy, which the industry and the rich people control." Empire hopes to reach youth in places like middle America, where he sees the media as controlling and, in some cases, misinforming people who have limited access to news and ideas. With this goal in mind, Empire is happy to tour with Rage Against the Machine, another band that preaches leftist rebellion and a fight against the status quo. "That's one thing that gives me hope," Empire says. "There are a lot of kids out there who don't agree with the system at all." |
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