Digital Hardcore

Digital hardcore brings punk confrontation into electronically programmed music. In Atari Teenage Riot’s practice, computers, samplers and drum machines share the work with vocals, guitar-derived noise and abrasive processing. The intensity comes from the collision of these elements, not simply a fast tempo.

Their catalogue moves between constructed songs and extreme live noise. A studio release can feature rappers and guitar guests, while a concert can abandon the songs entirely. The name also belongs to a wider label and collaboration network: EC8OR’s Patric Catani and Gina V. D’Orio represent another documented partnership, with short, noisy songs such as We Are Pissed offering another route into the scene.

Atari Teenage Riot’s own account centers programming on an Atari 1040ST and describes its music as explicitly political. The 60 Second Wipeout repertoire brings collaborators including Kathleen Hanna, the Arsonists and Dino Cazares into that framework. The currently available digital-master edition is dated 2013; that is not used here as the original album year.

On 29 November 1999, the group’s Brixton Academy concert became a deliberately songless noise performance. Its later release identifies different electronic roles for Nic Endo, Carl Crack and Alec Empire. The 2012 remaster preserves that unusually abrasive edge of the practice, rather than serving as a template for every digital-hardcore performance.

EC8OR offers a parallel partnership: Patric Catani and Gina V. D’Orio released through the Digital Hardcore and Grand Royal network. Its self-titled catalogue and the 1997 All Of Us Can Be Rich review document short songs driven by electronic beats, grinding noise and confrontational voices. Catani’s later solo work also shows why the genre should not be projected onto every subsequent project by its musicians.