WOMAD

Empirion

From United Kingdom

Tough as nine-inch nails, Empirion are three Essex lads whose debut single, 'Narcotic Influence', was a cult hit in 1993. Their blueprint is clear: make the beats as big as possible and dare to do almost anything in the mix. This is techno at its rawest - hard, fast, loud and brilliantly executed.Empirion are Bob and Oz, who make the music, and Jamie, who DJs. Bob was at school with the Essex duo Nitzer Ebb, one of the first UK bands to mix heavy industrial sounds with dance and rock music. Jamie regularly snowboards with Liam from The Prodigy, whom Empirion have supported. There's a bit of both those bands in this one, and other acknowledged influences include Ministry, Orbital, Depeche Mode (more Essex boys), Belgian new beat and Kraftwerk.'Narcotic' became a cult track, and not an easy one to find. It resurfaced last year on the XL album, 'Advanced Technology', which also included the band's other three early singles, 'Quark', 'Ciao', and 'Jesus Christ'. As Q magazine pointed out in its review, this was an album of "blazing imagination, and it rocks like Motorhead".A new single, 'B.E.T.A.', was released in April. Like its predecessors, this is a take-no-prisoners track, driven on an incessant snare and hi-hat rhythm, unstoppable loops and devastating use of a quirky vocal sample.