Apple in Germany has blocked the release of Atari Teenage Riot’s new iPhone application. Featuring the entire back catalogue of the band, along with all of their videos, bios and a photo archive. It is the controversial Riotsounds Produce Riots audio player that has caused Apple to get its knickers in a twist.
Featuring a collection of square sine waves, sub bass and noise previously used by ATR, the sounds exist in a frequency range that causes panic and hysteria. The idea was to make them available to all to induce riots and mayhem on May the 1st – which has just passed this weekend in Berlin.
"Apple is arguing that they still need to investigate further because it is legally a grey area and ATR has been indexed in Germany before (censored). The delay in releasing the App will mean it’s not available ahead of May 1st when Berlin police are expecting the biggest riots since the nineties. ATR are waiting to find out if it is allowed a release at all. Alec Empire is set to appear in a documentary film for the TV station ARTE about music & sound being used to torture prisoners. Alec will be interviewing soldiers who were in Iraq, prisoners from Guantanamo Bay & others involved, he was chosen for his knowledge of the matter, which may be one of the reasons why Apple is so concerned."
Alternatively you could see it s a bit of blatant opportunism from a band who are trading on their anarchist past to make a lot of money from their come back shows (there are several, even though they would have believe that there is only one).
I also can’t imagine that many of the black bloc who were out in force on saturday were actually in possession of an iPhone.
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