Generation Star Wars by Alec Empire
1994, Mille Plateaux, 13 tracks at 1 hr, 13 min.
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RATING: 46 out of 50

L’enfant terrible of German techno, Alec Empire is a man who is very apt at displaying the polarities of his mother culture. Like East and West Germany, Empire’s music is likewise split into opposing factions. He can be stoically ambient, removed of any feeling but fear (Low On Ice, for example). As demonstrated by his early rave work, The Destroyer, and Atari Teenage Riot, he is equally skilled in crafting liberally-minded blitzkriegs of ballistic noise. On his second solo effort, Empire evidences his forte for the dualistic with a epic, hour-plus LP of varying electronic moods.

The results are highly stratified and inconsistent, though Empire’s spotty approach to chaos is often part of his charm. Of the seventy minutes on the disc, the first ten are devoted to one outstanding track, in which several minutes of slow ambience are blurred into a ferocious drum n’ bass rhythm. I’d say it’s derivative of Richard James, but I can’t; this disc was released around the same time Aphex was building his own name. The remaining sixty minutes are likewise varied, with tongue-in-cheek electric exotica (“Sonyprostitutes”), haunting vignettes (“Smack”), and dazzlingly frozen messages from outer space (“Pussy Heroin”).

It’s a mixed bag for certain, and one would think that a man of many talents might not be particularly apt in any one of them. Even if the contents of this disc can figuratively be found elsewhere—and they can—it’s the no holds barred approach which Empire takes to fashioning his own little planet that works. No resource is left stocked; everything is exhausted for exhaustion’s sake.

Writes one Discogs user, “This can only come from Berlin!” That statement, quite bluntly and eloquently, sums up the achievement of Generation Star Wars.