AGF
Einzelkämpfer
AGFPRO011
AGF Producktion 2009
13 Tracks. 60mins09secs

Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Poet, musician and sound artist, Antie ‘AGF’ Greie-Fuchs has been distilling her particular blend of electronic music for over fifteen years. Born in what was then East Germany, Greie relocated to Berlin in the mid-nineties, where she met Jürgen Kühn and formed Laub. The pair released their first album in 1997 on Kitty-Yo and went on to release four more, the latest one published two years ago on Greie’s AGF Producktion. Beside the many projects that have kept her busy over the years (The Dolls, The Lappetites or her collaboration with long term partner Vladislav Delay as AGF/Delay), she established herself as a solo artist as early as 2001 with the split release Constant Variable with Kyborg, for which she contributed three tracks and, a year later, her solo debut, Head Slash Bauch.

Her latest effort, Einzelkämpfer, which translates as Lone Warrior, is said to explore the idea of lone warriors through the ages and across species. Pushing the concept to the extreme, Einzelkämpfer is released through Greie’s own AGF Producktion imprint. Continue Reading »

AGF/DELAY
Symptoms
BPC193
BPicth Control 2009
12 Tracks. 56mins14secs

Buy/Stream: CD | MP3 | iTunes | Spotify

Four years on from their previous outing as an creative couple, Antye ‘AGF’ Greie and her life companion Sasu ‘Vadislav Delay’ Ripatti rekindled their collaborative project and serve another slice of angular space-age pop, where clean cut electronics and dub-infused moods form a warm and vibrant cocoon for AGF’s ice-cool breathy vocals and miniature tales of every day life.

The pair’s first collaborations were documented on Explode, an album released on AGF’s own imprint, and was rapidly followed with a second collaboration, this time between the pair and composer Craig Armstrong, as The Dolls. Since, both have been busy on various solo projects and productions jobs. Symptoms returns to the original AGF/Delay template and give it a new definition. Continue Reading »

ELLEN ALLIEN
Sool
BPC 175
BPitch Control 2008
11 Tracks. 52mins54secs

Given Ellen Allien’s close links with the Berlin techno scene, this album is probably going to come as a surprise to many. While it does not abandon the dancefloor aesthetic of earlier records, the beat count has certainly slowed and a more inward-looking sound has superseded the skeletal techno of old. Whether the helping hand in the studio of fellow Berliner AGF has contributed to this more reflective sound is not easy to say, but the cut-up, Schaefferesque sound experiments of AGF’s Words Are Missing do definitely seep through into the mix from time to time on Sool. Perhaps this change of direction is a sign that Allien is moving away from the modern minimalist scene she has done so much to shape. But if not, it does at least suggest her sound is drawing on new sources. And after the largely disappointing Boogybytes techno compilation she DJed earlier this year, this would be no bad thing. Continue Reading »

AGF
Words Are Missing
AGFPRO008
AGF Producktion 2008
55mins59secs

As Homer once said, there is a time for words and there is a time for sleep. Whatever her instincts as a poet, Laub founder Antye Greie has obviously decided to tear up the script here and abandon words altogether. Boldly claiming to look into “the phenomena of silence, speechlessness, deconstructed language and impeded communication”, at first glance this is a record that seems more like an academic treatise than a piece of music. And the ethereal, glitchy sonic landscapes at first seem almost too cerebral – as if an idea had been placed wholesale onto disc with no musical intervention in between.

But like a dusty text that gains in clarity the more one looks at it, sounds open up here as though from cracks in the carefully prepared edifices. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Boogybytes Vol. 4 mixed by Ellen Allien
BPC171
BPitch Control 2008
15 Tracks. 66mins00secs

After the success of her recent Fabric mix, Berlin DJ Ellen Allien here takes over the controls on the Boogybytes series to deliver a tightly scripted disquisition on the micro-techno scene. With most DJ sets, there is a need to balance coherence with variety, and the new with the pleasingly familiar. Here, though, Allien aims for a sound whose consistency of beat and texture varies in slight details from one track to the next. It is a bit like listening to the slow and delicate shifting of tectonic plates – with the calamitous possibility of the quake lingering somewhere in the distance.

Because of the clinical, almost surgical cleanliness of Allien’s style, calamity and event are rarely brought into the mix in any obvious way. Instead, melodies float beneath scattergrams of sonic pulses, allowing rhythm to dictate the album’s intricate soundwaves. The sound that results is effortlessly now – as BPitch, her label, proudly avers – a soundtrack of urban facades and cityscapes. Continue Reading »