All of us who grew up with MTV and the techno era of the nineties have a few strands of Ben Watkins in our DNA. We spent an hour on the phone with one of the forefathers of all that’s goa and psy with the saw leads and the bubbling basslines and the samples that cut knowledge in our forebrains and we know – he loves working with new people, he thinks dubstep is the new shit and he’s just a master chef… or so he says.
(Originally published in THE DOSE #2, 2007.)
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We hooked up with Alec Empire not too long after Election Day. The mastermind behind Atari Teenage Riot and now his new project, The Hellish Vortex redbulled into a chilly evening and talked about his apparent optimism into 2009, his movie projects, how MySpace fame can turn into a worst nightmare and also, what you need to tweak to acquire the urban stage legend we call “riot frequency”. All this in the bowels of a Ukrainian stone-carrier ship turned into a venue on the Danube.
(Photos by Akos Stiller.)
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Headscan has always been a definitve milestone in intelligent dance electro, industrial techno, cyberpunk, call it what you will, in a pantheon of names like Haujobb, Clock DVA or Forma Tadre. Cool, blue and sombre across the soundscape of the real, they slapped Gibson and Sterling into the mix of hyperclear electronics under the TV skies of Canada. Taking a break, they shared their opinions on cyberpunk, bizarro, techno-fetishism, Dune and many more.
(Originally published in THE DOSE #2, 2006.)
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