Alec Empire has never been the kind of guy you'd take home to meet your mother. While other musicians played at being scary, he was the real deal: dour, fiercely political and forever unwilling to let a good time get in the way of some antifascist polemic and white noise.

As a solo artist, founder member of anarcho-punk noiseniks Atari Teenage Riot (formed in 1992) and head of the aptly-named Digital Hardcore Records, the razor- cheeked Berliner has been behind some of the most insurrectionary blasts of electronic music ever.

But armed with a blond hairdo and a new album that exchanges rebel-rousing for soul-searching and synthpop, has the toughest man in techno finally gone soft?