ATR WEEK: Excerpt from an exclusive new Alec Empire interview

"For me a label was always 2 things mainly: a platform to present my music and a place where I can work together with people in order to improve the music and its presentation. For too many artists or the owners having a 'label' has become more something like a status symbol. I am always looking for music and have rarely developed this religious trust to a label like many other music fans. I am missing the diversity of indie record labels in the music industry right now. It's like a handful of companies who just manage to keep going and a lot of bedroom stuff that can't really survive 6 months.

So I rather watch what musicians do, the real creators, instead of hoping for a label has a real vision and brings something new to the table. The musician of the future must sense his/her audience, must communicate with them, like at a concert, to then put the pieces together for that audience. I don't think labels can do that job in the future. Distribution is no longer a real challenge. Those artists who find and create their own crowd in this fragmented music world will succeed. And that is not so different from the way it used to be in the history of music.

It is also very scary how the traditional labels have become such a threat when it comes to censorship of the internet for example. They'd rather support laws that kill freedom of speech while they have build their business on the basis of that freedom. It is no coincidence that all this great music was written, recorded and produced in a society like ours and not Nazi Germany for example. There is a link between the society and the music it produces.

I think for a lot of the online DIY labels, it serves more the job of having a community under a banner, rather than a business. So for me it's a bit strange because why not then just do exactly that? Getting together with like minded artists... Why does the music press still look for the assurance? Like when a band is 'signed', they will write about something that's worth writing about.

All that has to change... and it has to change fast because the Titanic has left the harbour."