Atari Teenage Riot
| Atari Teenage Riot | |
|---|---|
 |
|
 Atari Teenage Riot, 2010 |
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| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Digital hardcore |
| founding | 1992, 2010 |
| resolution | 2000 |
| Website | www.atari-teenage-riot.com |
| Current occupation | |
| Alec Empire | |
| Nic Endo (from 1997) | |
| CX Kidtronik (from 2010) | |
| Rowdy Superstar (from 2012) | |
| former members | |
| Carl Crack († 2001) | |
singing |
Hanin Elias (1992–1996, 1997–2000) |
Atari Teenage Riot (ATR) is a band from Berlin that was founded by Alec Empire .
Atari Teenage Riot combines anarchist messages with cyberpunk themes in their texts. They are regarded as the inventor of the music genres Digital Hardcore , a mix of techno , hardcore punk , industrial , noise , metal and breakbeat , predominantly digital music technology produces is. Atari Teenage Riot create their songs exclusively on an Atari ST computer, as the band believes that advances in music and art are not dependent on advances in computer technology .
history
The project was founded in 1992 in Berlin by Alec Empire. At the beginning Hanin Elias and Carl Crack were there. The classically trained soundscape artist Nic Endo was added later. However, other musicians were regularly involved in tours and studio recordings, so that a permanent line-up could never really be made out.
Atari Teenage Riot's first concert took place in Berlin in the spring of 1992, when the group appeared in the opening act for The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy . Shortly thereafter, they signed a contract with the indie music label Force Inc. Music Works and after the first release Hetzjagd auf Nazis (Hunt Down the Nazis) with the English Phonogram label in England. In 1993 the singles "Atari Teenage Riot" and "Kids Are United" were released and work was done on the recordings for the first album "Delete Yourself". The band toured England and performed at Popkomm with The Prodigy and Moby .
At the end of 1993 it came due to disagreements about the marketing of the band to the separation with Phonogram UK. Then in the spring of 1994 ATR founded its own record label Digital Hardcore Recordings . British radio DJ John Peel soon became aware of the band and invited them to one of his well-known Peel Sessions on the BBC . In 1996 the band signed a contract with Grand Royal, the label of the Beastie Boys, and reached Burn, Berlin, Burn! Gold status in the US. They toured with Rage Against the Machine , Beck , Jon Spencer Blues Explosion , Wu-Tang Clan , Ministry and Moby. In the same year there was also a collaboration with the band Slayer for the song No Remorse , which could be heard in the soundtrack of the film Spawn . In 1997 and 1999 they headlined the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.
In 1999 Atari Teenage Riot played on a truck on the occasion of the May Day demonstrations in Berlin , which called against the participation of German soldiers in the NATO military intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . During the concert there were riots around the loudspeaker truck, but the band continued to play until the police took them away. There was no charge because the musicians did not commit any offense. The video recordings were admitted as evidence in court proceedings against individual police officers who were disproportionately harsh against some of the demonstrators at the demonstration.
In 2000 Atari Teenage Riot took a break after a long tour with the band Nine Inch Nails . The live performance of the single "Rage" in the television program "U3000" by Christoph Schlingensief on MTV is considered the group's last public appearance, as it was seen in the 1990s. After Carl Crack committed suicide in September 2001, the group's future seemed uncertain. The members initially went their separate ways.
On March 28, 2002 the album Future of War was indexed in Germany due to the booklet .
In 2006 the song "Speed" was heard in the film The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift.
In early 2010, Atari Teenage Riot announced a reunion show in London and a new single, Activate . MC CX Kidtronik joined as a new member. This makes Atari Teenage Riot a trio again. Nic Endo took over the vocals. In this formation, ATR were on a tour through u. a. Germany , Taiwan , Japan and the USA to see and hear. In the summer they signed a contract with Steve Aokis Dim Mak for the USA and Canada.
In June 2011, after twelve years, the studio album Is this Hyperreal? . Atari Teenage Riot then toured again through the USA, Europe and Japan and played new countries such as Russia, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and many more. At their sold-out concert in Tokyo, Japan in November 2011, the live album "Riot In Japan" was recorded, which was released shortly afterwards in Japan and in February 2012 was released internationally.
A new member joined in February 2012: the London-based rapper Rowdy Superstar. In this line-up, ATR also played at the Coachella music festival in California.
Atari Teenage Riot wrote the music for the video presentation for the opening of the 30c3 Congress of the Chaos Computer Club in 2013. The film portrayed the 30-year history of the hackers and their computer technology.
On March 26, 2014, the fifth studio album Reset was initially only released in Japan, where it went straight to number 1 on the "Foreign Album Indie Charts". It was released in Europe in early February 2015.
Worldview
Atari Teenage Riot basically describes itself as ' anarchist libertarian '. The texts often deal with the danger posed by nationalism , which leads to racism . In titles such as 'Deutschland Has Gotta Die' or 'Black Flags' the division of the world into nation states is questioned and criticized.
Alec Empire describes in some interviews that the past of the German Democratic Republic and the associated surveillance state can be traced back to a state that is too 'powerful'.
In the song Hetzjagd auf Nazis you can hear the voice of a radio player who says: "The 9th shot went clean through the forehead", which was often interpreted as a call to murder alleged or actual neo-Nazis . There are no other lines of text in the otherwise instrumental piece. Atari Teenage Riot was engaged several times by the anti-fascist action in Germany, England and the USA for concerts.
The subject of corruption appears again and again in different contexts. The album The Future of War describes entanglements between politicians and the defense industry and took the Iraq war in 1991 as inspiration, for example in the songs Future of War , Get Up While You Can and Redefine The Enemy .
Each album in the group has a theme as a guide. Again and again, the group describes their music as "Riot Sounds" and quoted "Riotsounds Produce Riots" William S. Burroughs , which establishes the theory in his text that one with the loud playing of sounds of a Uprising in public is also a revolt summon because the listeners behave accordingly.
Alec Empire derives the composition method "Music as a weapon" from this theory and thus criticizes the willingness to use violence of extreme political activists, but also includes the state. In his article about the riots in London in summer 2011 he wrote for the English music magazine "Louder Than War": "Violence is always the result of people failing. Failing to communicate, failing to take responsibilities, failing to solve problems. Always." (Translation: "Violence is always the result of human error. The failure to communicate, the failure to take responsibility, the failure to solve problems. Always.")
As early as 1993, rapper Carl Crack sang in the title Kids Are United (an adaptation of the song If The Kids Are United by the English band Sham 69 with changed lyrics) "You know that violence is a disease It's going to be a part of our lives and our future if we don't do something against it! But if we put our energies together it could be a very powerful era! " (Translation: "You know that violence is a disease. It will become part of our lives and our future if we don't do anything about it! But if we merge our energies then this could be a very powerful era!")
An important line of text in this context is to be emphasized from the piece of music The Slight Glimmer of Hope . There the governments are asked: "How much blood will it take? How many bullets will it take?" In an interview with the British political magazine "The New Significance", Alec Empire referred to the precise calculations made by the US Army before it invaded Iraq in 2003.
The term "riot" is used in ATR in various meanings. On the one hand to describe an actual uprising, on the other hand 'Riot' is also a metaphor for a radical, rapid rethinking of the listener when he / she is confronted with the music. However, the term 'riot' was repeatedly used in interviews to describe the band's wild concerts, where it happens time and again that the audience storms the stage euphorically.
In 1996 Atari Teenage Riot released a joint single with the English group Asian Dub Foundation on the Damaged Goods label, the proceeds of which were donated to Satpal Ram. The case came to the fore after the British courts were accused of racism during the trial.
Since 2010, an open sympathy with the hacker group Anonymous has become evident in the songs Black Flags , Re-Arrange Your Synapses and Codebreaker . Atari Teenage Riot is fundamentally against any state control of the Internet. In 2011 there was the official t-shirt "Free The Internet From Government Control". The viral video for "Black Flags" shows some anonymous activists who have made their video clips available to ATR. Anonymous activists were able to download the instrumental version of "Black Flags" from the official ATR Soundcloud. So the song appeared in various Anonymous statements on the Internet. The Anonymous group "OP Blitzkrieg" hacked various neo-Nazi websites in Eastern Europe and put the song on their homepage.
In spring 2012, journalist Max Keizer reported on a news program on Russia Today TV channel about the arrest of various high-ranking Anonymous hackers by the FBI and mentioned an uproar between Sony and Atari Teenage Riot. Sony had licensed the song "Black Flags" for a commercial in the USA for the product "PS Vita" without knowing the background of the song. Alec Empire then donated the proceeds to the Anonymous Legal Fund "Free Anons.org", an American law firm that financially supports underage hackers sued by Sony for copyright infringement. The commercial continued to run parallel on American television. A few weeks later, the viral video for "Black Flags" was nominated for the MTV O Music Awards in America in the category "Best Protest Song of the Year".
In the June 2012 issue of the English magazine "Dazed & Confused" Alec Empire interviewed the hacker Anonymous AnonyOps for four pages.
Alec Empire was very critical of the Pirate Party in an article on copyright in Rolling Stone magazine : "We don't need a surveillance state. I don't want my songs to be defended by men with guns because that's what it comes down to when they do Dragging a youngster to court for 'illegal' downloads . But it is much worse when the state uses precisely these men with their guns to rob us creatives of the right to earn money. That is, for example, the aim of the German Pirate Party. Sooner or later this way of thinking leads to book burns , or the creatives withdraw and leave a void. The Internet must not be subject to government control! "
This quote also shows why ATR keeps adding the word "libertarian" to "anarchist", because ATR has founded their company "Digital Hardcore Recordings" in London since 1994, and since then has independently controlled the exploitation of their music and worked regularly with them Major labels (Phonogram, Elektra Records, Intercord etc.) and indie labels (Grand Royal, Beat Ink., Rough Trade, Dim Mak) together, which, however, only take on the role of a distributor.
The musicians at Atari Teenage Riot were mainly Hanin Elias and Nic Endo, but also Lisa B. Crack (Carl Crack's sister, who in 1997 on the US tours with Beck , The Roots, as well as ATR's appearance on Rock Am Ring Hanin Elias replaced) or the "Carolines", two musicians who in 1996, during Hanin Elias' absence, completed their first US tours as well as concerts in Japan and Europe. Le Tigre / Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna also appeared with ATR and can be heard on the third studio album "60 Second Wipe Out". A reference to feminist worldviews has been evident from the start. There is always talk of the self-determined role of women (for example in songs like "Sex", "Heatwave", "Shadow Identity"). During anti-nuclear demonstrations in Japan in 2011, activists changed the official logos from Atari Teenage Riot to "Anti Tepco Riot". On the CD "Riot In Japan" Alec Empire can be seen taking a sign from the audience and holding it up.
reception
The magazine Wired wrote that the "incorrect" sounds of the band, the intended imperfection, a new meaning would get in our time. Alec Empire is quoted as saying, "From music to nuclear energy , people understand technology as a religion and say, 'This will solve all of our problems.' I am very skeptical about that. "
Discography
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Official studio albums
- 1995: Delete Yourself (published in Germany under the name "1995"; Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1997: The Future Of War (Digital Hardcore Recordings; indexed)
- 1997: Burn! Berlin! Burn! (Grand Royal)
- 1999: 60 Second Wipe Out (Digital Hardcore Recordings, Beat Records (Japan), Festival Records (Australia); 2000 as Enhanced CD)
- 2011: Is this Hyperreal? (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2014: Reset (Japan Edition Digital Hardcore Recordings / Beat Ink)
- 2015: Reset (European Edition Digital Hardcore Recordings / Rough Trade )
Official live albums
- 1999: ATR: Live In Philadelphia (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2000: Live At Brixton Academy (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2012: Riot in Japan 2011 (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
Singles
- 1992: Hunt down the Nazis
- 1993: ATR (Promo, Vertigo; CD, Phonogram )
- 1993: Kids Are United (Phonogram)
- 1994: Raver Bashing / Together For Never (Riot Beats)
- 1995: Kids Are United / Start The Riot (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1995: Kids Are United (EP, Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1995: Speed / Midijunkies (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1996: Germany Has Gotta Die / Riot 1996 (Grand Royal)
- 1996: Not Your Business (EP, Grand Royal)
- 1997: Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1997: Paranoid / Free Satpal Ram (Split-LP, Damaged Goods)
- 1997: Sick To Death EP (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1998: Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture - Australian Tour (EP, Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1999: Atari Teenage Riot II (EP, Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1999: Revolution Action (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1999: Revolution Action / Digital Hardcore (MC, Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 1999: Too Dead For Me (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2000: Rage EP (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2010: Activate (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2011: Blood In My Eyes (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2011: Black Flags (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2012: Collapse oF History (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2014: Reset (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2014: Modern Liars (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2015: J1M1 (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
Compilations
- 1997: Burn, Berlin, Burn! (Grand Royal; 2002 Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2002: Redefine The Enemy! (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
- 2006: Atari Teenage Riot (1992-2000) (Digital Hardcore Recordings)
Soundtracks
- 1997: No Remorse (I Wanne Die!) - Spawn The Album
- 1998: Sex Law Penetration - Orgazmo
- 2006: Speed - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift Soundtrack
DVD
- 2008: Atari Teenage Riot / Alec Empire - Video Works 1992–2008 (Digital Hardcore Recordings / Monitorpop Entertainment - also as a limited edition)
Videos
- 1993: Speed (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 1995: Kids are united (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 1997: Sick to Death (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 1997: Destroy 2000 Years of Culture (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 1997: Atari Teenage Riot (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 1999: Revolution Action (live version, director: Philipp Virus)
- 1999: Revolution Action (Regular Version, Director: Andrea Giacobbe)
- 1999: Live in Berlin - May 1st, 1999 (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 2000: Too dead for me (Director: John Hillcoat)
- 2000: Rage (Director: Philipp Virus)
- 2010: Activate (Director: Zan Lyons)
- 2011: Blood In My Eyes (Director: Nic Endo)
- 2011: Black Flags (Director: Alec Empire)
- 2012: Collapse Of History (Director: Metatoy Productions)
- 2014: Modern Liars (Director: Rob McLellan)
- 2015: J1M1 (Director: Daniel Sims)
literature
- Marcus Maida: Symbolic War. - uprising against Germany. War in the nursery. Revolution in the media country. Can medium-sized white breads be made to glow by too much theory sampling? A fictional dialogue of real theories on history, strategy, impact and contradictions in Atari Teenage Riot and Digital Hardcore Recordings. in: testcard # 9: Pop and War . Mainz, Ventil Verlag, 2000, ISBN 978-3931555085 , pages 114-129
Web links
- Official website
- Digital Hardcore Recordings label from Alec Empire
- Atari Teenage Riot at Discogs (English)
- Atari Teenage Riot at laut.de
- Interview on the story with Alec Empire at groove.de
- Informative English-language interview with ATR at artrocker.tv
- Author John Robb Interview with Alec Empire shortly before the 1st London appearance in 2010 on thequietus.com
- Interview with Tagesspiegel
swell
- ↑ DVD: "Atari Teenage Riot / Alec Empire - Video Works 1992-2008"
- ↑ ATARI TEENAGE RIOT's "Future Of War" on the index in Germany! ( Memento from January 1, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Announcement of ATR Reunion via Alec Empires Twitter
- ^ Announcement of ATR Reunion via NME
- ↑ Chart sources: UK