Browse by Artist: AGF

Artist:	AGF
Title:	Words Are Missing
Label:	AGF PRODUCKTION (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	AGF 008CD

Berlin-based AGF (aka Antye Greie) is a vocalist, software musician, producer, label-owner and e-poet. With her fourth solo album, Words Are Missing, she leaves words behind, instead using voice, beats and drones to create a huge palette of unique sounds to work around the phenomenon of silence, speechlessness, deconstructed language and impeded communication. The subjects in which the wordlessness is expressed are carefully chosen and vary from dark-memory experiences like visiting the concentration camp in Buchenwald (when the artist was 16) to beat-driven humorous content, like the track called "Kreuzwortraetsel ("crossword"). The listener witnesses a recorded alphabet turning into a trilogy of compositions called "Letters Make No Meaning (Weapons No War Germs No Disease) I," "Cognitive Modules Party II" and "Ooops For Understanding III," and the differences between recorded silences in tracks 8A. "Present" and 8B. "Absent." The album's artwork delivers a deeper insight into the meaning of the compositions which features a total of 16 works of calligraphy, drawings and photography by AGF designed into an elaborate book format by the renowned designer, Alorenz. The CD comes in an upright digipack with a 20-page booklet that distracts the origin of words into a conceptual letter play derived from abstract calligraphy. Exploring a personal form of poetry into electronic music, pop songs, calligraphy and the world wide web, AGF's entrancing live performances and sound installations have taken place all over the world in museums, auditoriums, theaters, concert halls and clubs.

Artist:	AGF
Title:	Gedichterbe
Label:	AGF PRODUCKTION (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	AGF 015CD

Gedichterbe is a project by AGF (Antye Greie) that investigates German poetry and the heritage of the German language within electronic music and society. Including the first-known female German poet Frau Ava (11th century) and today's "wunderkind" poetess Ann Cotten (born 1982), poets were chosen from the romantic period of the 18th century, from Jewish poets during the 20th century and poets from East/West Germany after World War II. Personalities from the German electronic music scene help AGF interpret the poems: collaborators vary from the famous techno DJ Ellen Allien, the underground avant-garde legend Gudrun Gut, the prolific German rapper Pyranja, Berlin's electronic star Barbara Morgenstern, the scandalous Gina D'Orio from Cobra Killer, and more. AGF presents poets and poems close to her heart, and here the relationship between sound and music is investigated and interpreted. So how does this sound? Can Quio rap Frau Ava? Do Friedrich Schiller and Karoline von Gnderode stand the test of time? Can Else Lasker-Schler and Paul Celan inspire us today? The music is radical modern and contemporary minimalistic, supporting the poetry as well the history around it. The historical text is interpreted with digital sound technology and aesthetics. Sometimes poems are deconstructed and cut-up and processed to the point of non-recognition, sometimes the poems remain pure and untouched. The voluminous CD book includes numerous calligraphic drawings by AGF and an extended scientific text in German by Christine Lang about language and sound in context of this work. Other contributing artists include: Quio, TBA and Bothnian Draale Pack.

Artist:	AGF
Title:	Beatnadel
Label:	AGF PRODUCKTION (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	AGF 016CD

AGF aka Antye Greie releases her seventh solo record. Beatnadel (trans. "Beat Needle") is a piercing sonic outburst of razor-edged beats and pilot vocal art. AGF is a rare combination of composer/producer and vocalist. This is digital songwriting with beat structures and penetrating sound sculptures to inspire the mind. The tracks have been constructed out of large, self-designed sample banks, voice, bass, synthesized sounds and discerning effect treatments. The music is sequenced to a large extent and holds an aggressive undertone compared to her recent works. AGF has cut out original tracks with surprising narrative and breathtaking precision in editing and sculpturing the sound. Deconstructed poetry, aggressive beat patterns, tender songwriting, drone parts, full-frequency spectrum. "I want to built a new tradition, an aural tradition, transmitted via the ears." --Karlheinz Stockhausen, London 1971. "He says, the one who is not afraid is anyway cheerful and does not need to sing" --Janosch in Kleiner Hase, Großer Held. "It's not a question of time, it's that people today lack a certain frame of mind. Time is no excuse, your time should be spent on self-improvement, there's no better way to spend your time." --Ai Wei Wei in his blog. Having worked with great composers of our time such as Vladislav Delay, Eliane Radigue and Craig Armstrong and produced records for Ellen Allien with Gudrun Gut and many others, AGF once again concentrates on voice and post-club crossover. After finishing a stage play soundtrack to Orlando (AGF 014CD) with classical composer Craig Armstrong, and releasing a conceptual poetry work Gedichterbe (AGF 015CD) about the German heritage of language, Beatnadel is a very personal form of expression with no compromise. "Lingu-tik" features the voice of Prof. Noam Chomsky. Otherwise, the work is composed, recorded, mixed, mastered and executed by AGF. Artwork and calligraphy also by AGF.

Artist:	AGF
Title:	DelayONmyPILLOW
Label:	MIXER (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	3" CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	MIXER 003CD

"Over the past few years AGF has been critically well acclaimed for her poetry-based music and soundworks. Sound and speech have melted into one unique entity. The delicacy and intimacy AGF displays in her work knows very little equals in todays electronic and digital musics. delayOnmyPillow is no exception and simply is a great piece. Stichting Mixer is very proud to release this excellent work of integration of the human touch in the clinical digital domain of sound."

Artist:	AGF
Title:	Language Is The Most
Label:	QUECKSILBER (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	QUECK 006CD

"How code made its way into my music. As a singer and producer, I rely primarily on content, and that can get to be a real encumbrance. After many years of creating music, I feel that I'm being confronted over and over again with the fact that listeners -- and especially when it comes to Germans dealing with the German language -- have problems getting to the music. Content always comes first -- the message, the brain. In cutting the tracks for my album Head Slash Bauch (head slash gut), I wanted to free myself from this coercive pressure to have to say something understandable. On my way to becoming an independent producer, I geeked my way through the process of self-education in matters of hardware, software, user's manuals and all the other stuff that goes with it. And that's how the computer/laptop came to exert an extremely positive -- except for the chronic back pain -- influence on my working and lifestyle options, my communication and production possibilities, and makes possible more and more flexibility, speed and personal control. So that's how I discovered the poetry and beauty of this technically practical programming language. Since then I've been experimenting with this tension between technical coolness and rhythm and melody in connection with reality, feeling, vision. For the opening of the Ars Electronica Klangpark 2003, I presented a live performance featuring some of this work and my recent album Westernization Completed and integrated into it a composition especially based on the dictionary entry for 'code'." -- AGF

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