Alec Empire (born May 2, 1972) is a German musician. Born in West Berlin as Alexander Wilke, Empire is most well known for his time as frontman of Atari Teenage Riot, but has also generated respect for his solo work.

Empire started making punk music in the early 1980s. When he discovered techno, he immediately developed an affinity for it and abandoned punk at once. When he saw after a few years that most of his friends were only concerned with partying all night and did not care about events in the world (which is something that Empire expected his friends to do since they lived in a separated Berlin), he set up his own, new, anarchistic music style called digital hardcore.

He gathered two of his acquaintances, Carl Crack and Hanin Elias and set up the band Atari Teenage Riot. When they received contract offer from a record company that gave them a high advance payment, they accepted it. After their relationship with the record company went sour, with the advance money, Alec Empire set up Digital Hardcore Recordings which has released a number of records. A fourth member, Nic Endo, joined the band, whilst Atari Teenage Riot was on tour.

In the same time, Alec Empire recorded several abstractsolo records on the label Mille Plateaux . After the death of Carl Crack caused by an overdose, Atari Teenage Riot was put on hold by the surviving members, which goes their separate careers since 2001.

External link

• Empire's biography at Digitalhardcore.com