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Baker's Dozen

Start The Riot! Alec Empire's Favourite Albums
Laurie Tuffrey , June 16th, 2014 07:50

Ahead of Atari Teenage Riot's set at Camden Crawl, the band's founder uses his rundown of favourite albums to issue a clarion call for creativity and puts together a three-hour mix of tracks from his top 13

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Shizuo - Shizuo Vs. Shizor
People of my generation probably remember the producer from mid-90s Berlin. I put him on the list here because many younger DJs and music fans I ran into while we were on tour over the last few years kept asking about him. Yes, he was a total legend and there was no other. He sadly passed away in May 2011. This album is almost twenty years old now.  If we ever did one good thing in the 90s on Digital Hardcore Recordings then it was that we put out this album.

Many look to Atari Teenage Riot, because we were able to reach more people, but if you really want to understand what this music from Berlin was about, just listen to Shizuo. He was one of the first to really push the samplers over the edge. Insane programming, he probably typed on his keyboard while he was on LSD. His comics and artwork were 4chan before there was 4chan. A genius.

Very anti-authority stuff and very funny, not like what is considered "funny" in music for the last decade, like someone dumb who plays the clown and the sheeple can clearly identify a joke as a joke, Shizuo always outsmarted everyone, he trolled super hard, he had no respect for lame people. He saw patterns where other people just saw chaos.