poemproducer / blow up / italy

From: "Daniela Cascella" <danpty@tiscali.it>
Date: Di Dez 2, 2003 12:13:03 Europe/Berlin
To: "agf" <agf@poemproducer.com>
Subject: Re: FW: AGF questions

hello! great to hear from you!
thanks a lot for the great interview,
of course you can publish it on your
site the album is really really great!
take care
best
daniela

----- Original Message -----
From: "agf" <agf@poemproducer.com>
To: "Daniela Cascella" <danpty@tiscali.it>
Cc: "annibale picicci" <annibale@dense.de>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 7:10 PM
Subject: Fwd: FW: AGF questions

hi daniela
thanks for ur interest

daniela:
By the way, I received the burned copy
of "Westernization Completed"
yesterday from my editor
and I found it a great album,
one of the best I've heard this year,
congratulations, it's really amazing!

agf:
;)

thanks so much

pls watch the artwork
its very important too !!

http://www.poemproducer.com/artwork.html

QUESTIONS

1. Nearly two years have gone
since your debut release as AGF and you
have just published this new album,
which I find an amazing work.
To me, "Head Slash Bauch"
was a metaphor of the confusion
in today's relationships
as mediated by the internet,
and of the random information data flow
in which we are immersed,
and a cry for something else,
for something more human somehow.
This new album seems a great step
forward in that it is as if you
collected all the lost fragments
and started making beautiful threads
out of them, making poetry being born again,
letting melody come out in all its
power and starting to give a sense -
personal and never total,
as it can only be today,
but also very strong - to confusion.
Could you tell me
something more about what happened
between the two albums, and how you
set out to work on this one?

agf:

its a nice observation

i traveled a lot. i fell in love again.
i saw so many places all over and
played infront of an international audience.
i received respect for my work all over the planet
and i learnd so much ...
about production. music. art.
i got into movies and books again...
and spent very much time reseaching for music
... after this phase of listening noise
and finding pleasure in merzbow...
i needed to listen to humans...
and what they have to say...
i listened to lots of hiphop
and discovered this music as biographical strong

somehow i felt even this rappers
would toast something
i totally disagree with
i could still listen to it and study it....
and i admired their confidence
just talking this attitudes
it educated me a lot...
even in finding out the weknesses of it

so i widened my tolerance ...
but also found the courage to say
what i think and feel...
kind of... if this guys can stand up
and polute the planet with:

i like to smoke and i like to treat bitches shit

than i can also say ...
i dislike dope and dont like TV
and i like to be a better human
and actually wouldnt like
to be scared to live what i deeply wish

and where i come from...
i felt like its important to declare...
when i start saying things like that

i feel re - grounded.
and powerful to announce my art
and stand behind it...

also i grew as a producer
and i wanted to create an own language
without repeating myself

i am happy that you say its a step forward

2. I used the term beauty on purpose,
because you look very much
concerned with beauty throughout the album -
a "contemporary" beauty which is fragmented
and restless and ever-changing:
what does beauty mean to you today?
Where do you search it and find it?
How do you relate it to fashion,
another one of your interests?

agf:

beauty is love...
when i happen/ fight for to love something...
its a process .. i guess

beauty... its a piece of art
which is not obviously
pleasuring existance.
slightly disturbing.
and makes me FEEL.

smile. cry. love. happy. scared

it has to have something i didnt
discover before

i search it everywhere
and find it everywhere

for instance when i was listening
the xenakis remix at ars electronica
by naut human and sue costabile
did visuals. it was very dark
and amazing intense sound
and she did this super f
ast dark blurry visuals..
i really GOT scared .... !in real ..
i saw the evil or something...
i had to sit up and breath

it really shook me

thats beautiful

;)

but still also a flower if i have time
and happen to see one
or an ocean can reach that with me...
very natural simple things

a silence in a smalll boat
on a lake in north finnland
the sky never getting dark
and my favourite human beside me
trying to catch a fish

beauty ;)

3. Could you say something more
about your sources, both for your lyrics
and for your music?
Apart from the first-hand inspirations
(email, e-poems on one side, electronics on the other)
which past and current experiences
inspired you most?

agf:

travelling. did

my friend ulyana gumeniuk
painter
http://www.ulyanagumeniuk.com/

see my friend uli dzialls work on
fashion design
http://www.ulidziallas.com/

see my friend vladislav delay
creating luomo/ present lover

play with craig armstrong live
and with an orchestra

kaffe mathews.. spending time with her
and working with her

watch humans surviving

biograhies
making ofs
production books
of

picasso
dali
tarkowski

cinese and japanese vCDs
given to me by lillevan

4. What struck me a lot in listening
to "Westernization Completed" is that,
despite the large use of the fragment,
the result is not diaristic and
fragmentary but opens up to a wide number
of hints, of possibilities.
It undergoes that transformation
that differentiates simple documentary
"records"
(in which everything is registered and dies)
from accomplished artworks,
which even though they cannot give full answers,
suggest a number
of paths, of percourses,
of new creative ways...
Do you agree with this, and
how did your work process
articulate for this album?

agf:

i think its the complexity
which might suggest this...
for listeners who are interested
i am sure for many people
its just spoken word...
or annouying voices

saying things straight...
and combining it
with associative expressions
i think its a mixture... of poetry (old) ...
pop (present) and cyber expression

but i worked on many level
to produce this album
including artwork and lyrics...
and concepts
and also take care of the record
as an album..
which i hope to create
not single pieces of music

i was more into creating a sonic score
for a moment of time.
somebody is alone
and shares solitude with a piece of art
somthing I LOVE to expierence

all the sounds and words
have little fine connections
and because of that it has
secrets and hidden small details

which makes even myself
still interested in listening to it
even i heard every track 300 times

also i really worked my ass of
to have a good sound
i thought when its so weird music ...
it should be no problem
to grap it accustically

david toop said: me and my software sword
i like that.. i really felt like a warrior ..
trashing through audio
and cutting a path through ...
that people can follow

i like to combine things...
or better i am unable to do a straight thing

like a techno record.
or an ambient record.
i will continue to try
but i refail on that...

i have to mix influences together...
compliment silence with noise and
beat with silence and groove with loosing

5. More specifically,
how did you work on the sound in this album?
It is very full, varied and articulated
and it absorbs a lot of different sound
expressions...

agf:

i recorded lots of audio material...
i cant even remember...i was alone 2 weeks
and i was just recording/ playing music and words

lots of

in this time i had a rough concept
about certain pieces
i wanted to be more specific than in the first agf
say things clear i wanted to write and use english..
which is my main
language right now... i use most

listen write... discuss.. argue... cry and laugh with

but my friends are often not english native...
either finnisch ... ukrain...
french canadian.

so its a weird english ;)))

i wanted to make more a movie
than a record with tracks
i wanted to use beats ...
go away from ambient a bit
especially the dense warm sound ..
i love myself so much...
but didnt give me challenge anymore

i was writing a lot while travelling

a lot of dreaming...

for instance chorizon
i wrote in paris alone
in a chinese restaurant !
while i was witnessing global politics
and ate a really bad meal

:)

i wanted to write piece about failing
a piece about risking to live a life
like i was dreaming as a kid
i wanted to express my opinion on drugs
wanted to tell where i come from
wanted to exress my desire and curiousity to asia
i wanted to write about communication
and trust

- OK I guess this is all for now.
Thanks again for your time and attention,
and I look forward to hearing
back from you soon!

thanks stay in touch

yip agf