AGF: Language is the Most
Quecksilbur

Judging by her web site, AGF sees herself as a ‘Poem Producer,' an apt designation given how her music has evolved since Head Slash Bauch (Head Slash Gut) to the more impressionistic and painterly style of Westernization Completed and now Language is the Most. While different in notable ways, the latter two are companion recordings as Language is the Most uses parts of Westernization Completed as source material. The new release is a live album recorded on September 7, 2003 at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz , Austria and commissioned by Klangpark. In this regard, AGF's release recalls Vladislav Delay's Naima, his re-working of material from Anima, presented at the 2001 festival. The Klangpark project is, in fact, a site work staged at a riverside park with the sound projected through four loudspeaker towers, the Klangpark specifically the space between the Brucknerhaus and the banks of the Danube. The music on Language is the Most is less song-oriented and vocal-based than Westernization Completed, the material handled more abstractly and elastically as AGF patiently nurtures the music's development. There's an improvisatory feel to the process, with AGF negotiating the performance's unfolding in real-time. She deftly merges tactile electronics with softly spoken utterances in loose yet assured manner, the music drifting through mutating episodes of contrasting character and mood. “Language is the most exciting form,” she sings on “Salmiakki Pattern” amidst percussive clatter and a subtly persistent clicking rhythm. Sounds of a woman crying seep into ‘Delusion,” while a saxophone and exotic strings surface through the rainy mists of “Arriving.” Gentle melancholy pervades “Schlauchtraumstimmen” which slows to a crawl by track's end. As the 2003 festival's theme was “Code – The Language of Our Time,” sound scientist AGF was certainly a model choice considering the degree to which Language is the Most shows her sensuously scrutinizing communication codes of music, programming, and text.

April 2004