CD – Line

Antye Greie-Ripatti, aka AGF, has made her debut on Richard Chartier’s label, the LINE [SEGMENTS]. With Source Voice she seems to pick up again the thread of the long introspective experimentation: she modulates vocal emissions as her very personal, political and controllable instrument, beating out essential and rarefied electronics in very minimal style that features iterated drones and barely audible audio flinches. The German artist, now living in Hailuoto, Finland, mostly uses an ancient technique deriving from a popular practice, the yoik, a non-verbal form of singing typical of the Scandinavian tribe of Sami, a musical tradition considered one of the longest-living in Europe. The range of variations and frequencies are hardly suitable to easy decoding. An academic approach to them is not recommended. There is a movement away from the glitch expressions typical of her former experimentations; here on minimal caesura you can find more “organic” nuances that are at the same time corporal and immaterial. In many passages the drones make an evolution, they seem to come out from whispered yearns and it is not easy to work out what is the result of digital manipulation and what is not. The record seems to employ something like the “estrangement technique” used by the Russian formalists in the twenties, which makes unusual or obscure things seem normal, or the opposite – normal things seeming unintelligible because they are shown to us from “another” point of view. However, all the elements come together to create an effect of great charm: the processed voices, the foggy environments, the irreconcilable but resolute passages, the always intriguing and highly sensitive textures. Aurelio Cianciotta

 

AGF – Source Voice