GREIE GUT FRAKTION - Baustelle

Female collaborations have always inspired AGF. Starting way back with “Before The Libretto” with the Lappatites, and moving through excellent records such as her partnerships with Zavoloka (“Nature Never Produces The Same Beat Twice”) and visual artist Sue Costabile (“Mini Movies”), Antye has always attached great symbolic value to all-female works. This time it's a fellow German who joins her: Gudrun Bredemann. The driving force behind one of the best bands of 1980s Berlin new wave (Malaria!), the musician has reinvented herself admirably under the alias Gudrun Gut. The author for several years now of a far-from-negligible brand of modernist techno, the composer seems like the perfect foil for AGF.

Despite retaining a certain experimental appeal, the two artists let imagination and playfulness run free across a solid, cohesive album. There are clear differences from AGF's previous work and from her solo career in general. As happens on the albums released under the moniker AGF/DELAY, the rhythm is more regular, precise, monolithic, the pursuit of a perfect form of technological pop feels almost visceral and obsessive, and every track reveals an effort of ideas that often leads toward a decidedly unconventional, disjointed techno-pop. Gudrun Gut's devilish streak colors the whole record, lending an ethereal, mystical touch to some pieces, transformed into a formless mass of sounds and voices.

While pulsations take over (in “Wir Bauen Eien Neue Stadt” and “Mischmaschine” savage drum-machine patterns shine), dormant industrial manias dirty up quite a bit of the record's normal flow (the dirge “Drilling An Ocean”, the metallic glints of “Betongiessen”, silent miasmas for “Grossgrundbesitzer”). Dub tremors are part of an untamed sonic repertoire (“Cutting Trees”, “Baustein”), within which even the fake, feral proto-rock of “White Oak” manages to carve out space for itself.

With the artists' seriousness duly established, this can only be chalked up as yet another triumph for AGF, whose signature elusive brilliance remains the essence of an artistic project that has already borne so much fruit. Her art springs from a philosophy of life capable of teasing melodies out of any starting point, constantly generating new stimuli and enthusiasm, both for her and for listeners.

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05/09/2010