{"id":191,"date":"2008-05-09T22:02:28","date_gmt":"2008-05-09T10:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=191"},"modified":"2008-05-29T21:30:06","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T09:30:06","slug":"alec-empire-and-nitzer-ebb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2008\/05\/09\/alec-empire-and-nitzer-ebb\/","title":{"rendered":"Alec Empire and Nitzer Ebb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-192 alignleft\" style=\"float: left;\" title=\"The Golden Foretaste of Heaven\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/200px-alecempire-thegoldenforetaste.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"202\" \/>I was listening to one of the tracks from the new Alec Empire album &#8220;The Golden Foretaste of Heaven&#8221; the other day. I was loving it but it seemed a bit familiar. The relentless pounding beat; the hypnotic, discordant basslines; the snarled vocals; the overall claustrophobic intensity of the thing. Alec Empire is a German with an English-sounding name, but his music reminds me of an English group with a German-sounding name. Nitzer Ebb were big(gish) in the &#8217;80s but I only really got into them a bit later. I seem to own all of their albums and quite a number of singles, so I must like them. They released a career retrospective compilation (Body of Work) a couple of years ago; I thought that marked the end of the band, but apparently it just marked the beginning of their comeback.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-193 alignright\" style=\"float: right;\" title=\"Nitzer Ebb Body of Work\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/bodyofwork.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/>I was amazed a year or so ago to see that &#8220;Nitzer Ebb&#8221; were due to play a gig at a local venue here in Auckland. They will most likely release a new album this year. It will be interesting to hear what it sounds like. They started out 25 years ago with noises, shouting, fist-pumping and Futurism (that&#8217;s where the Alec Empire connection comes in) but moved more and more towards traditional song structures. Apparently they have already played some of their new material live and broadcast so I can&#8217;t wait to hear it.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"left\"><object classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/fpdownload.macromedia.com\/get\/flashplayer\/current\/swflash.cab\" id=\"Player_03adb219-333d-46f8-afa4-5deeefadadf4\"  WIDTH=\"234px\" HEIGHT=\"60px\"><param NAME=\"movie\" VALUE=\"http:\/\/ws.amazon.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthunderguycom-20%2F8014%2F03adb219-333d-46f8-afa4-5deeefadadf4&#038;Operation=GetDisplayTemplate\"><\/param><param NAME=\"quality\" VALUE=\"high\"><\/param><param NAME=\"bgcolor\" VALUE=\"#FFFFFF\"><\/param><param NAME=\"allowscriptaccess\" VALUE=\"always\"><embed src=\"http:\/\/ws.amazon.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthunderguycom-20%2F8014%2F03adb219-333d-46f8-afa4-5deeefadadf4&#038;Operation=GetDisplayTemplate\" id=\"Player_03adb219-333d-46f8-afa4-5deeefadadf4\" quality=\"high\" bgcolor=\"#ffffff\" name=\"Player_03adb219-333d-46f8-afa4-5deeefadadf4\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\"  type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" align=\"middle\" height=\"60px\" width=\"234px\"><\/embed><\/param><\/object><\/span>It&#8217;s funny &#8212; I always liked Alec Empire&#8217;s music, but never quite as much as I thought I should. Maybe it didn&#8217;t sound enough like Nitzer Ebb. But at least one of his new tracks, &#8220;New Man&#8221;, is just perfect: relentless pounding beat, hypnotic, discordant basslines, etc. Though the main bassline makes me think of Gary Numan&#8217;s &#8220;Are &#8216;Friends&#8217; Electric&#8221;, which I think even predates Nitzer Ebb.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe kids now think Alec Empire sounds dated, like those old fogeys Nitzer Ebb and Gary Numan&#8230;<\/p>\n<!-- wpsso rrssb get buttons: buttons on archive option not enabled -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to one of the tracks from the new Alec Empire album &#8220;The Golden Foretaste of Heaven&#8221; the other day. I was loving it but it seemed a bit familiar. The relentless pounding beat; the hypnotic, discordant basslines; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2008\/05\/09\/alec-empire-and-nitzer-ebb\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,7],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-cds","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}