agf

Antye Greie's artistic output under the AGF moniker transforms poetic material into glitch-infused electronic compositions, immersive sound installations, audiovisual live sets, and additional media formats. Initially recognized in the late 1990s as one member of the experimental electro-pop pair Laub, she launched her AGF project with demanding, fragmented electronics via early releases such as the 2002 album Head Slash Bauch. In 2004 she launched the AGF Producktion imprint, which issued her solo recordings including Words Are Missing from 2008 along with joint efforts such as the 2011 Orlando project alongside Craig Armstrong. Among her more approachable efforts are the experimental techno pairings AGF/Delay, formed with Vladislav Delay, and Greie Gut Fraktion, created with Gudrun Gut, whereas standalone efforts like Beatnadel (2011) and Dissidentova (2018) deliver rigorous avant-garde sound poetry.

She entered the world in September 1969 and grew up in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, within what was then East Germany, before relocating to Berlin in 1996 and establishing the downtempo electronic outfit Laub together with Jotka, the production alias of Jürgen Kühn. Serving as Laub’s vocalist, she contributed to a run of well-received Kitty-Yo albums: Kopflastig (1997), Unter Anderen Bedingungen als Liebe (1999), Intuition (1999), and Filesharing (2002).

Her first solo appearances as AGF arrived in 2001 through several tracks on the Neue Berliner Initiative compilation Constant Variable. After signing with Kit Clayton’s Orthlorng Musork label she delivered her debut full-length Head Slash Bauch in 2002, then followed it with Westernization Completed in 2003. Both records pursued conceptually driven experimentation—software code for the former, personal data for the latter—marking a clear shift from Laub’s relatively tuneful, song-oriented approach toward the abstract, frequently spoken textures that define her AGF work. That same year she started AGF Producktion, initially issuing a Quio 12-inch that she produced and re-releasing her second album. Later catalog additions encompassed a fresh Laub album, Deinetwegen (2007), plus the third AGF full-length, Words Are Missing (2008). Throughout the 2000s her activity on the label intersected with numerous parallel ventures, among them The Dolls (2005), the Lappetites’ Before the Libretto (2005), the AGF/Delay collaboration with Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay), which produced Explode (2005) and Symptoms (2009), and AGF.3’s Mini Movies (2006).

During the next decade she established an arts organization on the Finnish island of Hailuoto, settling there with Ripatti, whom she married in 2012. Her studio focus continued to alternate between individual and joint projects; alongside Gudrun Gut she created Greie Gut Fraktion and issued two albums on Monika Enterprise. The 2011 Orlando recording, realized with Craig Armstrong, supplied the score for a theatrical adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s biography of the same name. Standout AGF releases on her own label during this period included Beatnadel (2011), Kuuntele (2013), and Kon:3p>UTION to: e[VOL]ution (2016). Greie generally preferred collective authorship, a stance reflected in the 2018 split LP shared with Kommissar Hjuler und Frau and Marc Hurtado, as well as the collaboration-rich Dissidentova, which paid tribute to several prominent Russian women across history.