Atari Teenage Riot was the brainchild of Alec Empire; it was born out of excitement at the social and musical possibilities following the fall of the Berlin Wall and creating a new sound to suit those febrile times. He instinctively resisted the pigeonholing of pop punk and happy hardcore; the prevalent styles foisted upon teenagers at the time and in a series of home recordings broke the free of expectations and redefined the role of a young musician in Berlin.

He went on to form Atari Teenage Riot; a revolutionary melding of breakbeat, dance, electronica, hiphop and punk to create an entirely new approach to expressing his hopes and frustrations. Although confined to playing cellars on the periphery of the Berlin scene he was soon joined by like-minded iconoclasts and the nucleus of a new movement was formed.

Inspired by the book “Electronic Revolution” by William S. Burroughs and specifically the section about “riot sounds” Empire applied a similar cut up technique to sampling technology as the author had done with snippets of text, ripped from newspapers and books. The musical result couldn’t be easily categorized by journalists and DJs. Soon a new genre name was found to describe Atari Teenage riot: Digital Hardcore.

Alec had been releasing solo records for Achim Szepanski’s Force Inc. and Mille Plateaux imprints but Atari Teenage Riot were snapped up by the UK’s Phonogram label. The usual major label staff reshuffles left ATR back on their own but now with an album under their belt and a wad of cash -enough to start their own label, Digital Hardcore Recordings. Reconvening back in Berlin they planned the release of their album and along with some close friends launched a new assault on the world’s ears.

The group shuddered to a halt when ATR’s rapper Carl Crack was found dead in his apartment in Berlin in September 2001. Falsely reported as a drug overdose, Carl had had a psychotic reaction to the various drugs forced on him by a doctor’s misdiagnosis of his illness which left him unable to cope. Alec Empire and Nic Endo decided to focus on the Alec Empire solo project for a while. Between the ATR releases Empire had continued to release solo albums and his remixes for Björk, Thurston Moore, Rammstein, Primal Scream, Slayer and Gary Numan had cemented his reputation as an artist in his own right.

At Summersonic Festival in Japan Steve Aoki invited the band to record a new album for his label Dim Mak Records. Atari Teenage Riot found itself right in the heart of America’s exploding EDM scene with Skrillex opening for them at their New York show.

RESET is the new ATR album. It distils their thoughts on the current state of society; it takes the individual talents and moulds a new musical vision. They still embrace the disruptive effect of seemingly chaotic rhythms and arbitrary noise but also hits home with nerve shredding hooks and bone crunching riffs that characterise the essence of Atari Teenage Riot and thrust the future of visceral mind searing music firmly into the next era.