A Really Bloody Noisy Racket

Björk and a video game got me into Atari Teenage Riot

I have included a Spotify-playlist at the end of this article in case you want to listen while reading. Fair warning: most likely, the music will distract you from reading.

It’s a really bloody noisy racket

“It’s a really bloody noisy racket, you know?” was the answer when I asked a friend to borrow an Atari Teenage Riot CD. I was undaunted. One of my favourite albums at the time was Homogenic by Björk. And Alec Empire, the founding empire of Atari Teenage Riot, happened to have remixed the song Jóga on it.

Alec Empire’s work at the time was not for frail souls or people with tender ears. He is the father of Digital Hardcore, after all:

Digital hardcore is a fusion genre that combines hardcore punk with electronic music genres such as breakbeat, techno, and drum and bass while also drawing on heavy metal and noise music. It typically features fast tempos and aggressive sound samples. — Wikipedia

The album version of Jóga eased me into the remix. The tender love song starts with the Icelandic String Octet, gently sweeping you into an emotional landscape. Björk’s soothing voice carries you from one verse to the next. Especially with headphones it’s hard to multitask when the track starts playing.

What starts as an overture right out of a movie, starts making less and less sense. First, there are the lyrics:

State of emergency How beautiful to be State of emergency Is where I want to be

— chorus to Björk’s Jóga

Do you actually want to be in a state of emergency? If you paid attention to the lyrics, it’s somewhat easy to explain: it’s the overwhelming feeling of being in love. Don’t get it? Let’s ask Björk:

I was like ‘her… her…’ it was like ‘love… love…’ I couldn’t even put it into words.

Now that takes care of the first confusion, let’s move on to the second thing that throws you off: as the strings build tension, some weird noises slowly leak into your speakers. What’s going on?

Michel Gondry has done a wonderful job in presenting the viewer with a perfect symbiosis of video and sound in the music video he did for the track. If you listen without the accompaniment of moving pictures, however, things make less sense. The noises are a big part of the percussion but don’t seem to behave as regular percussion. Noise will be noise, I guess.

I no longer perceive the noise as weird or distracting. The noise is a quintessential part of the song. Both in sound, but also as the auditory equivalent of the State of Emergency. Björk herself felt that the original rhythm by Markus Dravs was too abstract. Mark Bell, the producer, complemented the original with the idea of noises. One of my favourite tracks of all time was born.

Wasn’t this about Atari Teenage Riot?

Well, I did announce a bloody noisy racket, didn’t I? So far I’ve introduced noise. Are you sure you want to go to the next level? This is the point where you either experience pure ecstasy or painful ears.

Got your headphones ready?

I’ll stick with Jóga for a while though.

Back then I tried to get limited editions of CDs. This was especially true for anything released by Björk. I managed to get my hands on the Japanese Limited Edition of the album Homogenic. To date, this is one of my favourite albums. In addition to the regular songs, this edition comes with five additional tracks.

I was immediately taken by Sod Off, Immature and So Broken. The Alec Empire Mix of Jóga and Nature Is Ancient, on the other hand, required some getting used to.

A friend told me the genre of these tracks was called Industrial. It’s a label I haven’t seen applied to them in any source, but apparently, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact genre. Wikipedia lists the original Jóga as baroque electronica, baroque pop, IDM, experimental pop and proto dubstep. Suffice it to say: the genre of the above tracks was equally hard to identify.

Both Nature is Ancient as well as Alec’s remix of Jóga popped my virginity to industrial. Or however you want to call those. The noise on the album Jóga helped me to fall in love with both. Take a pick from the playlist to any of Alec Empire’s remixes. They are all equally devastatingly good. I can never pick a favourite. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous go with the craziest of them:

Atari Teenage Riot

I was thoroughly excited by the wonderful remixes of Alec Empire, and I wondered what wonderful gems in his work were hidden from me. I borrowed the CD with some apprehension, put it into my PC's CD-ROM player, turned the speakers up and gave it a listen. I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

“Electronic music is not about memorizing — it’s about exploring the unknown & experimenting. That’s what sets us apart from traditional pop.” — Alec Empire

Nothing could prepare me for the onslaught that was Burn Berlin, Burn, the album Atari Teenage Riot had released in 1997. It starts with Start the Riot. You are bound to run into some hectic, chaotic, noisy music with a name like that. Actually, just looking at the names of the songs, you should expect the same from every track. Fuck All, Sick to Death, Deutschland (Has Gotta Die), Destroy 2000 Years of Culture and Into the Death are just a few examples. You can’t exactly expect a tender love song or a lullaby.

It’s not only the fast drums, it’s also the singing. And when I say singing, I mean a lot of screaming. Oh, so much screaming.

What a bloody racket! Is this supposed to be music?

The music was a left-winged response to neonazi techno which was popular at the time in Berlin. There is profound anger towards the neonazi’s and it goes without saying that this is very prominent in their techno, which they themselves dubbed digital hardcore.

It’s no surprise Atari Teenage Riot were political. They hailed from West Berlin. “For me, music and politics were connected for my whole life,” Alec said in an interview. “For me, music had to be political.” I guess at least one person considers their products to be musical.

Their performances, sometimes at protests, were known to include violence. They enraged roaring crowds while spreading their political message of peace and harmony. Check out this video with Alec’s commentary if you are interested. I won’t go into much detail for the sake of brevity of this article, which is supposed to be about music anyway.

I can’t listen to this. I give up. Let’s play GTA instead

My hubris had me thinking that I would actually like Atari Teenage Riot with my broad taste in musical genres. I turned down the speakers and dutifully listened to the entire album, secretly wanting it to be over. After it finished, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a vexing experience.

I did not play any music for the rest of the day. I wanted some peace and quiet. And to forgot about my ordeal.

After weeks later I sat down to play Grand Theft Auto. The goal of this video game is simple: steal cars and escape from the clutches of the police while running down pedestrians for fun.

It’s important to note that music is a big thing in the game. Nowadays, up and coming artists will happily sacrifice their bass player to feature on the soundtrack of one of the sequels. You get huge exposure to over 100 million players who listen to the in-game radio while driving around the city.

I played the first installment, which has an important musical feature too: as you get into a car, the music changes to that specific car’s track. If you have an audio CD in your drive, then when you enter a vehicle, a track from the CD is played. Usually though, you only hear small parts of it as you don’t stay in the car for very long.

As I was enjoying my gangsta lifestyle, I noticed something very unexpected: I was singing along. And more surprisingly I was singing along to the tunes of Atari Teenage Riot! I was unaware about this game’s feature and had left the offending CD in the tray.

Somehow, while I was committing random acts of violence, my ears didn’t object to the noise. And gradually I started to take a liking to the agressive noise.

Later, I played Burn, Berlin Burn again, this time without the video game. To my astonishment I found the album to be really enjoyable. Some songs are kinda hard to listen to (P.R.E.S.S. for example). Then again, there are only a handful of albums where I like each and every track. Grand Theft Auto served me a miracle by playing me snippets of Atari Teenage Riot.

I returned the CD to its owner sometime later. He was utterly surprised that someone would actually like the sound of it.

I still play the album sometimes.

When no one is home, that is.

Alec Empire’s remixes of Jóga are tolerated by my family from time to time. I can live with that. Too much noise in your life isn’t healthy for you anyway.

I tried my best to find the most accessible track on Burn, Berlin, Burn. It turns out they’re all equal in that regard. For your enjoyment, I have generously included all tracks.

If you can’t stand the noise at your first listen, don’t worry. It means that you’re human.

Atari Teenage Riot takes their intros seriously. The first ~30 seconds are notably different from the rest of the songs. When I was playing GTA, it always started at the beginning of a song, by the way. Maybe that helped me to take a liking to them. Feel free to skim through the songs. Spoiler: they add more noise as the tracks progresses.

Wondering why they have Atari in their name? Listen to the song Atari Teenage Riot for some 8-bit relief. Some. Don’t get too excited.

For maximum enjoyment, I have added the other songs from this article in the playlist as a peaceful interlude. Remember to breathe as you work through the list.

Did you know that every story you publish on The Riff is automatically Chosen for Further Distribution (formerly known as Curated)? Either that, or I have been lucky. A big shout-out to the editors of The Riff for making that happen. You guys rock!

Want to know which of your other articles are Chosen for Further Distribution in one simple overview? I have written an extension for just that. Check it out here.

Playlist

Link back to top here.