Empire Strikes Back

When I look through the majority of the British music press it seems almost backwards in its approach. It's the tradition of British pop and rock which weighs so heavily on people's shoulders that there's no room for progress. Alec Empire casts his eye over the state of the scene here in Britain. "You open up a magazine and you see these four boys and they talk about the Beatles being their inspiration and all that. I cannot stand them, it sounds like they all went to the same guitar school. It's quite a shame because the UK has always been so important for Europe in terms of giving an impulse and coming up with new innovations in pop music. I think over the past years they have lost that part of it. The Berlin scene is so avant-garde it inspires me more."

Empire, prolific producer and DJ that he is, remains best known as a founding member of Berlin-based digital hardcore group Atari Teenage Riot - fusing hardcore techno with less than subtle political overtones. Anti-fascist, anti-Nazi and anti-capitalist agendas have littered his previous work, but with latest offering The Golden Foretaste of Heaven, Empire realised "that I have changed so much that I wanted to get another side of me out there for people to see. I think on my DHR stuff there was one side of me that people saw that maybe took over who I really am. I'm still political and I'll always make a political point when I feel I need to. For this record I wanted to go a different way, but people can still access my old music and I don't feel the messages are outdated. When I make political records there is a general approach which is almost like a world view and not anything specific. It's more like a philosophy so it works over a longer period of time somehow. I don't feel the need to repeat myself and say the things that I've said in the past."

Empire has returned to Berlin, on the cusp between Western and Eastern Europe - "People from these parts listen to music with completely different ears," - to get the inspiration for his latest offering The Golden Foretaste of Heaven, released on his new label Eat Your Heart Out. "The whole rock 'n' roll thing has come to a standstill. I've always listened to that stuff, even when I was doing techno in the nineties. I think the model of how these songs are written are outdated and almost a relic of the last century, but that's just a personal opinion of mine. In electronic music at least the option is there for different sound approaches, different production techniques. People in general are into experimentation a bit more, even if they're just making pop music. The option is there to change things. With rock music it seems it's more about trying to preserve something which has long gone. People are trying to hold on to ideas which were right at some point but maybe not anymore."

Playfully, Empire has used his sleeve notes to describe his new album as 'indie rock'. Surely he's not mellowed that much? "Well, I try to think outside the limits of a genre and just do what I feel is right. It's a problem with the industry in general when people sit down and ask 'Can we market this?' 'Can we play this song on the radio?' I think the music industry should just trust its gut feeling more, rather than make assumptions of certain target audiences that may not actually exist. It's actually very rare that people only listen to one certain genre anyway. So, it was an ironic comment about the state of the industry. I think there's much more to my music and to me as a person than just a screaming guy."