Reassessment

Ágens: Of Heaven and Earth (Periferic Records 1999)

Ágens. A name that has become a trademark, a genuine label on the contemporary music market flooded with products with a short shelf-life.Even before the release of her first album she had serious successes. Her home-made cassettes were duplicated and passed from hand to hand , her performances were frequented by people who were affected by her unconventional music that is heedless of categories, clichés and styles.Her musical world is built on the widest range of human voice and this world is built by the voice itself.Speech,singing, crooning, chanting,reciting,arias, shouting, screaming, moaning, sighing.Everything in its own place and time.

This album was written between 1994-1997 together with her regular accomplice,Ferenc Boudny.Some of the tracks ( Nádnő, Keresés, 'No') are familiar from the first album and it is reasonable to reissue them in this context.Just like the previous record this one also focuses on moulding different situations and moods into sounds. The artistic approach is different, though:while her earlier compositions had the speaking subject at their centre which manipulated the sounding reality in correspondence with the 'programmer' meaning of agent , this universe itself has become a question by now.

These songs reject rigid analysis. It seems as if they would rely more on spiritual-emotional resonance and the free forms of abstraction than rationalized , intellectual musical thinking.

Is it perhaps a reassessment of our conception on music?

Translated: Gábor Harmati