Alec Empire

"I was born on 2 May 1972 in West Berlin. At the age of eight I started playing the guitar, at ten I was one of the city's best breakdancers, and at eleven I witnessed rap, the first music I ever really liked, being commercialised like crazy...

"I hated everything and became a punk, listening only to UK punk from 1977, a little US punk, no 1980s Exploited shit. I formed my first band, Die Kinder, who sounded like Dead Boys with German words (as we found out later). At 16 we split up, disillusioned, because we found that punk was dead. That was 1988..."

Empire later formed noise-niks Atari Teenage Riot and released a series of acclaimed solo recordings, including the albums; Limited Editions (1994), Low On Ice and Generation Star Wars (both 1995), Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5 and The Destroyer (both 1996), Miss Black America (1999) and Intelligence And Sacrifice (2002).