Lately I’ve been listening to a ton of Alec Empire (& associates) & enjoying it rather immensely.
It quite surprised me how great a lot of both the DHR catalogue & Empire’s other solo work is – tbc he feel off hard around the turn of the millennium – we’re talking about say ’92-’97 here but man what a run! It surprised me how junglistic a lot of it is, especially like his records on Force Inc. & the early DHR stuff which are like straight up proper jungle but only half of jungle – it’s like somehow only the bad vibes made it over to Germany, just the pure darkest Darkside, none of the loved-up bliss to temper things out. Pure Thanatos (
literally), no Eros. Which is surely an eventual dead end but damned if it didn’t produced some killer records along the way. I mean seriously his stuff ca. ’93 sounds like 2 or 3 yrs ahead of what even most of the classic UK jungle dons were doing at the time, tuff as hell bloodclart jungle tekno with Acardipane-style gloom & divebombing Cologne acid strewn over everything.
I was expecting a lot more silly shouty gabba-punk bizness a la ATR – there’s some of that too, Ec8or (ugh, that name – typing names with gratuitous numbers makes me feel stupid by association) tho their
AK-78 12” is a KILLER on the Nasenbluten tip. I didn’t realize how almost single-handedly responsible Empire was (well, also Amen merchants of death a la Remarc & the whole Hellfish/Producer thing) for spawning breakcore via influencing Scud & whoever. Man, breakcore – a case of diminishing returns if ever there was one. Zone of Fruitless Intensifications & all that – most of the classic DHR stuff is hard as nails but it still has room to breathe, it’s not just mashed up nonsense for it’s own sake.
Also he released a whole string of ambient/techno LPs on Mille Plateaux which are all also supposedly totally awesome but I wouldn’t know cause I’ve never heard any of ‘em.
Anyway so I’m kind of bewildered. Or maybe just bemused. The whole “digital hardcore” (brilliantly stupid name btw) thing seems like a widely underrated chapter of electronic music history. I mean, do ppl write it off cos of ATR? I know I did – growing up I lumped ATR in with both the Chems/latter Prodigy (during that brief moment in the late 90s where it seemed like techno, if it got dumb & rawk-ed out enough, might actually breakthrough in the U.S.) & also like NIN/White Zombie – the vaguely goth/industrial kids were into all of it & from there it’s a slippery slope to Slipknot & Korn. It probably doesn’t help either that Empire, not too surprisingly tho rather ironically given his very strong & prominent anti-fa themes, inspires/ed the worst kind of fanatical fanboys who devoutly preach his greatness.
I mean he’s kind of a singular genius a la the Basic Channel blokes or Wiley – one of these guys who just spawns entire genres in their wake – but his legacy has some things going against it – the lack of black influences (pretty much excised by ’95 or so when things get much stompier), in fact the common string tying it all together – hardcore punk, gabba, acid tekno, the hardness of jungle minus the funk, industrial – is loud fast angry young white guy noise. Not exactly like to impress soulboy/curator types I reckon. Too smart for the kids too dumb for the intellectuals innit, all the commercial stuff too harsh & weird to sell but smoothed over enough to ruin his cred with all the obscurantists & underground noise merchants...
Plus did I mention he fall off HARD?
Jesus wept...it’s like Rammstein mangling a cover of the worst Cure song ever. tho not as bad as The Mover being reduced to doing songs with Scooter I guess...
