PROBOT Vs. ALEC EMPIRE: Former ATARI TEENAGE RIOT Singer Clears The Air

March 14, 2004

German techno noise animal ALEC EMPIRE (ex-ATARI TEENAGE RIOT) has issued a statement explaining the absence of Dave Grohl's name in the credits for the ALEC EMPIRE CD "Intelligence & Sacrifice", which features the backing track for what eventually became the PROBOT (Grohl's much-acclaimed "metal" side-project) cut "Access Babylon".

"Dave Grohl and me hung out at the Big Day Out in Australia in 2000," Alec explained in a recent online posting. "We talked about doing a collaboration and later he sent me a tape with a couple of backing tracks. One of these was the backing track for the song which became [the ALEC EMPIRE song] 'Tear It Out'. At the time Dave explained PROBOT was just the collective name he had for a bunch of collaborations he was considering. Later, as the idea developed, he decided he wanted PROBOT to be a platform for an older generation of singers and I didn't really fit in.

"In the meantime we were sitting on our version of 'Tear It Out', which we loved, and it seemed a pity there didn't seem to be any prospect of putting it out. I was putting CD1 of 'Intelligence & Sacrifice' together and the energy of 'Tear It Out' fitted perfectly. We got permission from Dave, but it was so last minute we fucked up the credit on the artwork. While it meant no one would know of his involvement from the sleeve there was another consideration. FOO FIGHTERS and Dave had a very high profile at the time and there were a lot of examples of artists using other artist's names for their own advantage. We could have balanced out the missing credit by announcing to the press but I didn't want to trade on his name. We wanted 'Tear It Out' on 'I&S' because it was a great track, not because it was it was a collaboration with Dave.

"Of course we pay Dave record and publishing royalties on the track and when the time comes to repress we'll change the artwork. We had no idea the same backing track was being used on the PROBOT album but it's cool track on a very cool album."

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