AGF is the stage name of the German artist Antye Greie-Fuchs. With her compositions she finds herself somewhere in the twilight zone between poetry, technology and music, for the sake of convenience called Intelligent Dance Music (IDM). Greie-Fuchs, who is also part of the electronics duo Laub, manipulates spoken word and sound with her computer until a whole is created that, despite all the
… electronics, appears very natural. She cuts words up on the syllable and is stitched back together as desired and mixed with minuscule ambient sounds, glitches, clicks, cuts and strangely bouncing beats. Through all the details, AGF forces the listener to actually listen with concentration. 'I'm trying to make you listen' says Greie-Fuchs in the song Poem Producer and she certainly succeeded. The album title also refers to her East German childhood before the fall of the Berlin Wall and life afterwards. Westernization Completed is an extremely intriguing CD that requires time and attention, but is nowhere inaccessible, cold or distant. (IV)more
