Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Kino Šiška / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 06.10.2011
Attendance: 500
Ticket price: €18.00 / €23.00
The Berlin digital hardcore crew Atari Teenage Riot are kicking again. They officially announced their rebirth in 2009, and they haven’t been sitting on their hands since the reunion. This year they dropped their new studio album “Is This Hyperreal?” and hit the road on a fresh tour, which on 07.10.2011 also brought them to Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška.
The reawakened band is working in new times, once again as a trio, with Alec Empire as the only original member. The spot Hanin Elias once held in the group now belongs to Nic Endo, who has been working with the band since the second half of the nineties, while the lineup’s new MC (read: Master Of Ceremonies) is CX KiDTRONiK. The band showed just how pumped it is about the new times at Kino Šiška too, playing almost the entire new album “Is This Hyperreal?” and mixing “iron-clad” tracks from the previous three studio albums in among the new songs in the set.
An hour and 20 minutes of absolute sonic terror, or sonic chaos, was fanned even further by the merciless flashing of strobes. The fans of this genre in attendance threw themselves into it with no brakes on, and of course they hadn’t forgotten to put on the obligatory baubles of the wildest, most extravagant deviations that always come with this alternative corner of the musical underground.
The new album live showed that Atari Teenage Riot have stayed true to their recognizable stylistic tradition, since the new material fits onstage perfectly with older tracks like Into the Death, Too Dead For Me, Atari Teenage riot, Speed, Start The Riot and/or Revolution Action.
The sonic terror, built on an interweaving of rhythmic programmed loops as the foundation for the whole trio’s preaching about absolutely anything and everything, sent the crowd into an ultra-hypnosis of unstoppable enjoyment. By turning up in force in the hall, they also showed that Slovenia is far from having forgotten this band’s past work and image.
If you ever want to become part of a fictional street revolution that drowns out every nuclear bomb explosion, then catching an Atari Teenage Riot show is without a doubt still the right address in 2011. Their preaching, committed to tolerance for those who are different, is actually even more relevant in these new times than when it first appeared, given the numbed-out single-mindedness that can no longer be recalled or re-set in the poor heads of the masses.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Activate 2. The Only Slight Glimmer Of Hope 3. Black Flags 4. Shadow Indentity 5. Into The Death 6. Too Dead For Me 7. Atari Teenage Riot 8. Sick To Death 9. Rearrange Your Synapses 10. Is This Hyperreal? 11. Codebreaker 12. Blood In My Eyes 13. Speed 14. Start The Riot 15. Collapse Of History 16. Revolution Action
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