Description

Romanian-born Alexandra Atnif was fascinated by the harsh, grey concrete beauty and minimally repetitive force of the brutalist post-war architecture of her homeland, and this fascination has given rise to the music here.

Vol. 1 is an EM Records edition, compiled from an earlier self-released double CD featuring recordings from 2014-15.

Using elemental, inexpensive technology, Atnif’ s music is heavy and harsh, stripped down to distressed skeletal frameworks, rhythmic noise, rusting metal and weathered concrete, a distorted DIY realization of her beautifully brutal vision.

With a background in European modernist/avant-garde music, Atnif has been influenced by early rhythmic industrial music such as Throbbing Gristle, Esplendor Geometrico and Muslimgauze, as well as later practitioners of rhythm and noise including Pan Sonic, Autechre, Winterkälte, Prurient and Scorn.

Across the relatively brief span of years contained within these two volumes, we hear the rhythmic structures begin to fracture and fray, and the outlines darken and become more obscure, with Antif’s sensibility evident throughout.