AGF: "Letters Make No Meaning (Weapons No Ware Germs No Disease)"

So, deal is, Antye Greie, as AGF, samples herself saying the entire alphabet and then rotochops the entire thing into some crazy dance number that works because of how much it owes Throbbing Gristle. I think. I’m still astounded by how well this “experiment” works—and, really, how there are like 20 more that also work on Words are Missing. As the title(s) may suggest the game here is exploring the relationship between meaning and sound, but no linguistic student talking about phonemes and morphemes has ever sounded this funky, and this particular track (the first in a triptych) is about as happy as the album gets. And even then it’s a sinister thing only really approaching something we might call danceable towards the end, just before the pitch slides all the breath in the song into oblivion. Throughout the tones are washed in waves of gentle distortion and other noises, adding complexity and movement to a non-stop juggernaut of carefully sampled and clipped phrasings built from the debris of and entirely different mouthing.

Let this be the future of rock music, please, given that every cock rock swagger pales in comparison to the simple, biting eloquence of a billion syllables that say nothing and everything at the same time.

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