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AGF, “language is the most”

Artist: AGF
Title: language is the most
Release Date:

AGF, language is the most, released 2004 by Quecksilber Germany

00) loading
01) code in the noodle soup
02) reduced trust
03) white flip flops
04) salmiakki pattern
05) delusion
06) arriving
07) schlauchtraumstimmen
07.79) leerzeile
08) burning fraquencies
09) un-de-buged

language is the most is a live recording of AGF’s performance at the 2003 Ars Electronica Festival. It is much more spartan and pointillist than her first release, head slash bauch, retaining the pops and clicks of glitch music but letting go of the sonic wash and much of the vocal manipulation that imbues much of head slash bauch. language is the most has a much more evident ryhthmic impulse, with beats and thuds drawn from dub/reggae.

Oddly, the presence of those beats makes the album less compelling. By using less experimental material and making her music less abstract, including more conventional elements, AGF’s electronic music becomes more banal; generic moody glitch music that anybody could have thrown together. When the music becomes more ambiguous and severe, the limited presence of the most compelling element of head slash bauch — AGF’s treatment of her voice — makes her aural tinkering sound aimless.

Again, this is a live performance, most likely built on improvising with prerecorded material; making aggressively abstract music without the considered, controlled environment of the studio and still getting a worthwhile result is very difficult to pull off. But most of the laptop artists I’ve seen live have been able to create incredibly satisfying pieces using similar methods. Perhaps there are other live sets of hers that are better.

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