Zavoloka-Agf – Nature never produces the same beat twice
What makes me think of rough 90’s eastcoast-hip hop when listening to the zavoloka+AGF-record i just received? i don’t think that rap-music is a great influence for the artists at this album, and strictly focusing on the music there are no hidden links between, let’s say,*the wu-tang clan* and this female super-group of electronica. you know what? i think it’s the uncompromising way, antye and katia mix up their harsh sound, this snoting out the beats, the concept of jamming to a steady pulse of various bpm and recoding what happens.
don’t get me wrong- there’s a huge difference between the RZAs peaking finger-snaps and those rumbling beats you can hear on nature never produces the same beat twice. antye is into (more or less) electronic music since the early nineties and katia also released enough tracks to know about ‘good production’. it’s a strict decision to let the tracks appear like they came to be, like carefully cultivating the weed on yr frontdoor pavement instead of cloning a rose, if you want to stick to the biological concept of the album. their tracks grow like grass, trees, like magic peas to heaven, from kiew to berlin and vice versa.
i admit: you have to listen with some good will to cover the specific beauty of this record. but there are so many things happening in the 50 one-minutes songs! if you’re familiar with the solo-works of AGF and zavoloka, you will recognize many of katias semi-tonal synth-sounds, the flute-samples, her harsh singing. antyes voice is also present in the mix, altered with some effects. still the use of human voices gives some hold in the storm of musical particles the listener gots to put in order. due to that, the sparingly use of harmonies emphasizes the melodies if there are some. nature never produces the same beat twice is a quite rhythmical album, but the subtle harmonic surplus makes it outstanding and special. far too fragmentary to be called the future sound of electronica, but one of the most exiting records of abstract electronic music i was allowed to listen to for the last few months. 8