Wednesday, March
5
Admission: $9, $10 minimum
Showtimes: 8:30pm
reservations are
recommended
Berlin producer, vocalist and e-poetess AGF aka
Antye Greie performs her recent works live while screening calligraphy
stills
WORDS ARE MISSING
After the vocalist has produced about 15 long player records
with words in
the centre of attention, focussing on poetry and language, with her 4th
solo album Words Are Missing she is leaving the words
behind.
Instead she uses voice, beats and drones as well as creates a huge palette
of unique sounds to work around the phenomena 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 (cross word). 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, or the difference between recorded silence in the track 8.a PRESENT 8.b
ABSENT.
The album's artwork delivers a deeper insight into the meaning of 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 digi pack with a 20 page booklet which distracts
the origin of words into conceptual letter play derived from abstract calligraphy;
through symmetry, ornament, elemental form, repeated forms, centering, balance,
and sculptures through a direct translation of drawings. This process allows
the visual content of the works to be considered both apart from, and along
with, the significance of the wordless composition.
THE ARTIST
AGF (a.k.a. Antye Greie) is a vocalist, a software musician, a producer,
an e-poet.
She was born and raised in East Germany and developed an early interest
for music, poetry and philosophy. In 1996, with Jotka, she formed the electronic
pop duo Laub, which recorded a series of records on the Kitty-Yo label. AGF
became interested in the artistic exploration of digital technology, which
is manifested on her first solo record, "Head Slash Bauch" (on Orthlorng
Musork), where she translated fragments of HTML script and software manuals
into a form of electronic poetry and deconstructed pop. The follow-up record, "Westernization
Completed", won an Award of Distinction at the 2004 Ars Electronica festival.
Her collaboration with Sue Costabile involving live audio-visual improvisation
resulted in the 2006 AGF.3 + SUE.C CD/DVD release called "Mini Movies" (on
Asphodel).
Greie's work was rewarded with a cover story on the May issue
of the UK
Wire Magazine 2006. She runs her own label AGF Producktion and has
collaborated with Vladislav Delay, Craig Armstrong, Kataryna Zavoloka, and
QUIO. She also performs and records with the laptop quartet Lappetites,
which includes Eliane Radigue, Kaffe Matthews, and Ryoko Kuwajima.
Exploring a personal form of poetry into electronic music, pop songs,
calligraphy and the world wide web, her entrancing live performances and
sound installations have taken place all over the world in museums,
auditoriums, theaters, concert halls and clubs. AGF lives and works in
Berlin.
http://www.poemproducer.com
http://www.poemproducer.com/tosuck/wam/AGF_LETTERS_MAKE_NO_MEANING.mp3
"Her new project... an engrossing and puzzling hourlong
CD. An elegant
booklet goes some way toward explaining these sighing, flickering creations "
- NY Times Arts & Leisure section 10th feb 2008
"a highly-yield adventure in the still relatively uncharted zone between
music and language" THE WIRE (02/2008)
"The interplay between light and dark is central to the consistency of
‘Words Are Missing, acting as the gel which brings
all the elements
together. Ultimately, this is a varied, thought-provoking and thumping
release that deserves to be heard by all serious fans of out-of-scope
electronica." - experimusic.com
"The music by AGF is highly personal music, in which she puts together
personal emotions, feelings and experiences. Yet this is no an entirely
closed work... it's certainly a varied work, sometimes heavy on rhythm,
sometimes as quiet as poetry can be. Very nice. I should check out what
else I missed from her" - vital weekly
catch AGF...
ON THE COVER of THE WIRE MAGAZINE: AGF - Word
processing in Berlin with
polystylistic laptopper and digital 'poemproducer', Antye Greie. By Keith
Moliné http://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/267/ |
