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Underground > Radio & Music >

Anyone wanna pimp Atari Teenage Riot ? I think I missed them

  
 
Jack Denfeld
10:25 / 22.03.07

I wasn't able to see any threads on this band using the search function, but Barbelith search option is kinda suspect so who knows. I did see a bunch of Alec Empire threads, but no Atari Teenage Riot threads.

I remembered this bad ass Slayer/Atari Teenage Riot song from the Spawn soundtrack, and looked it up on youtube, and the song makes you want to run around the room and punch all your stuff until your exhausted. So then I started downloading some more stuff on youtube, and I'm really liking the sound. The superfast music, weird drummy stuff, and the two vocalists interacting. Found a cool Sham 69 cover.

So with all the Alec Empire fans, I thought someone could kinda tell me about this band, where to start, the good, the bad, anything really.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
12:25 / 22.03.07
Go to www.Alecempire.com for CD quality downloads of the entire back catalogue on super cheap, CD quality download.

While you're there take advantage of the 99p per track, thin to get hold of the "Live at Brixton Academy 1999" show.

It's phenomonal, normally I'd say it's the last place you should start, but at 99p(2$?) why the hell not jump in with both feet.

It's the sound of a band commiting suicide on stage, burnt out from drugs and touring, and on the vere of going completely insane 4 people tried to take a stadium full of people (there to see Nine Inch Nails) down with them.

28(?) minutes of pure noise, not everyones cup of tea, but if you can handle that, you can handle anything ATR'll throw at you.

Stoatie can tell you more, he was there. Not sure how much of him survived.

Beyond that I've only heard the greatest hits and 60 second wipeout, good luck hearing from the more informed.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:44 / 22.03.07
There're a few Alec Empire thread knocking about...

ATR were one of my favourite bands ever- the live shows were fucking stunning (yes, including the legendary Brixton noise show) and each and every release was a thing of righteously furious future-punk JOY.

I've got some reviews online somewhere- I'll try to dig them out for you. But yes, ATR, even now they're long-gone and the fuss has all dies down, still have the power to turn me into a rebellious teenager again with every listen.

Pretty much every release on Digital Hardcore is a winner, actually.
 
 
rizla mission
13:32 / 22.03.07
For a minute back there, I had a theory about Atari Teenage Riot embodying the PERFECT POP GROUP. Think about it;

A group with an equal gender balance and four different races/nationalities, a 100% earnest dedication to continuously calling on tha kids to RISE UP and FIGHT THE POWER and BREAK STUFF and, like, BE REALLY ANGRY about... well they didn't often get to the 'about' to be honest, but all the better, cos that bit's BORING and OBVIOUS, and it's the GET ANGRY!! GRR!! ACTION TIME!! that counts.

And all this set to an ADD-beating, angry kid pleasing win-win combination of bone-breaking electronic noise, lo-fi punk sensibility, lots of SHOUTING!!, and booming Public Enemy-via-Happy Hardcore beats holding things together.

The whole leather-wearing, Nine Inch Nails supporting goth/industrial shtick I'm not too keen on, but it seems to mean they don't PISS AROUND like indie types with a similar M.O. undoubtedly would, so.. fine, good!

Add just about enough notoriety, glam cool-ness and massive, dumb tunes to penetrate the public/media consciousness, trickle-down to the provincial kids who really need this sorta thing, and YES! LET'S GO! Fuck the bloody Sex Pistols or whatever, A.T.R. = TOP OF THE POPS!!

They can be like some scary, youth-corrupting, civilisation-wrecking teen phenomenon dreamed up by a 2nd rate cyberpunk author!

Didn't quite work out that way though unfortunately...

The death of Carl Crack, antipathy, grumbling and poor management within Digital Hardcore, and the more general post-9/11, post-Iraq disappearence of the niave "fuck the system!" type politics that ATR effectively soundtracked around the late '90s... and they are no more.

Alec Empire made one staggeringly brilliant solo album, "Intelligence & Sacrifice", which was so Big and Good and Fist-pounding and Germanic and "C'MOOOON!!" that I fear it actually took him full circle into self-parody, and since then he seems to have turned into a bit of a has-been nightmare, recording a god-awful album of pro-tooled '70s punk piss-takes, upping his egotism and shades/leather trousers "I'm a rock star!" thing and touring around toilet venues backed by a bunch of balding punk dudes (since when was that part of the plan??).

I quite enjoyed solo stuff by both Hanin Elias and Nic Endo back in the day, but they both seem to have dropped off the radar completely... I sadly suspect that like Alec they're both busy running their own 'thing' (shouty feminist electro-punk diatribes and grim industrial soundscapes respectively) into the ground for the dwindling enjoyment of hardcore fans.

So, in general, ATR solo projects = less than the sum of their parts, and when they WERE the sum of their parts I fear they were primarily... of their moment.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
13:57 / 22.03.07
Nic Endo hasn't dropped off the radar completely, from what I've read in interviews, she's been heavily involved in Empire's solo recordings and tourings, from before I&S, so I never think of them as solo albums.
 
  
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