Alec Empire (born Alexander Wilke-Steinhof on 2 May 1972 in Charlottenburg, West Berlin) is a German musician who is best known as a founding member of the band Atari Teenage Riot. Also a prolific and distinguished solo artist, producer and DJ, he has released well over a hundred albums, EPs and singles and remixed over seventy tracks for various artists including Björk. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the digital hardcore subgenre and the record labels Digital Hardcore Recordings and Eat Your Heart Out.
Wilke's father was a working-class socialist, himself the son of a radical activist who perished in the concentration camps of the Second World War. His maternal grandfather, Karl Steinhof, was a self-made millionaire who patented the first domestic hand-knitting appliance during the economic boom in Germany in the 1950s.
Wilke grew up during the Cold War near the Berlin Wall, which he passed every day on his way to school. The frequent sight of patrol guards with guns influenced his outlook on life from an early age. He describes Berlin at the time as: "Probably the most left radical place in Germany in the 70s, terrorists, a lot of demonstrations, and probably the first address to hear the latest American music, because of the radio shows the US soldiers brought to Berlin."
Atari Teenage Riot's sound was characterised by the use of breakbeats (again sampled from funk and rap, but replayed at more than twice their original speeds), heavy guitar riffs, and the shouting of politically driven lyrics and slogans by the band members (as well as sampled dialogue). Empire provided much of the musical direction, and with the later input of Japanese-American noise musician Nic Endo, the ATR sound took on a more chaotic, arrhythmic nature marked by rough sequencing, improvised mixing and extended "noise-fests".
ATR signed a record deal with Phonogram, a major UK label, in 1993. The two parted ways after only a couple of single releases, due to the band's refusal to play by the label's rules. In 1994, using the non-refundable cash advance from the deal, Empire started an independent record label that allowed its artists the freedom of expression Phonogram were unlikely to give. He named it Digital Hardcore Recordings (DHR); the direction his sound had taken came to be known as "digital hardcore." That year, DHR released EPs by EC8OR, Sonic Subjunkies, and Empire himself.
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16 окт 2024
