Battery 9 the industrial project from the troubled soil of Johannesburg, South Africa, is the brainchild of Paul Riekert, who writes, plays and records the music.
He started recording under the name Battery 9 in 1994, bored with the creative constraints of a standard rock band format. A platform to run various projects from, One F Music, was subsequently founded, in the form of an independent record label and a small home studio.
The first Battery 9 album, Protskrog, was released in 1995. Made and backed by little more than a shoestring budget, it sold well enough to warrant a licensing deal with independent record company Tic Tic Bang.
The next release, Strop, (1996) saw Battery 9 break through to a wider audience, with the song Kiss The Machine receiving daytime airplay and eventually charting on 5FM, a major South African commercial radio station. For the first time, the major industry took notice and the project received major media coverage, while the live act played for increasingly bigger audiences, culminating in a solo show at the Viper Room in Pretoria in 1997 that drew 1200 people. In the same year, the album Gris, featuring re-mixes, re-interpretations and interactive CD-ROM data was released.
In 1998, the album Wrok saw the light, and was awarded Best Rock Album in that year's South African Music Awards.
After a few major live performances, like supporting Prodigy and Faithless on their tour in South Africa, Battery 9 took a break for a couple of months to re-charge batteries, and re-assemble the live act.
In December of 2000 and January 2001 Battery 9, with a newly formed live act, performed a well received short tour of South Africa. The set lists included a few new songs from the upcoming album, Sondebok, which was released early in 2002.
Difficult to confine to a specific genre, Battery 9 is industrial-sounding, influenced by the sounds and the rhythms of industry. The music also reflects influences of hip-hop, dub, and hard techno music.
The recordings and the live act have always been separate: the music is written and recorded before it is performed live. The live act is an interpretation of the music on the CD. The two are not, and are not meant to be the same. The live lineup has been through many changes, and is never the same for too long.
