I’ve been on the Alexandra Atnif train for a decade, since we first picked up her 2015 split cassette with Constable Flavour at Amoeba Records in Hollywood. In case those of you running record stores were wondering, there are indeed some folks like me who always check out the staff recommendations and will definitely buy stuff displayed that way. I’m that guy. And Mrs. Life in the Vinyl Lane is that girl. And that’s how we fell in love with Atnif’s music.
Atnif describes her style as Rhythmic Brutalism, which is also the name of a pair of albums she released in 2017, Rhythmic Brutalism Vol. 1 and Rhythmic Brutalism Vol. 2. Quite frankly it’s also one of the most apt musical descriptions I’ve ever encountered. The concept of brutalism ties back to its primary usage as a style of architecture that emerged in the 1950s, brutalism, one that relies heavily upon exposed and unpainted concrete to create very angular structures that can be both incredibly oppressive-looking and oddly beautiful at the same time. Brutalist designs have a mass that goes beyond their sheer size, an emotional weight that sits on your chest like a boulder and in utter and total contrast to the natural world surrounding them. Hailing originally from Romania Atnif was exposed to the style, which was embraced in Eastern Europe, and much of her album artwork features images of brutalist architecture. This includes her most recent work, Intolerant Red Marches, which shows the Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, a hilltop shrine of sorts that uses massive concrete soldiers as a way to show… friendship? You certainly get the impression the regime was really using this to communicate its own overwhelming power, a not-so-subtle reminder not to fuck with the state.
So what does rhythmic brutalism sound like? The rhythmic part is easy – beats, heavy beats, beats that pound the pit of your stomach like jackhammers, beats that move the needle into the red and carry some fried distortion. If the beats are the foundation, the concrete used the shape the track, the other sonic elements constitute the angles, sharp and abrupt, direct and unnerving. On Intolerant Red Marches that includes varying beat patterns, pure noise, air raid sirens, and a host of other sounds injected into the track using the largest gauge hypodermic possible. And yes, I said track singular – because Intolerant Red Marches is a single 90-minute track of unrelenting pulsing and pounding. Is it the irresistible force or the immovable object in the paradox? It could be either. Or it could be both, the actual moment the two come into contact and the unknown happens. Will something give? Will the two obliterate one another? Or will a third thing emerge, something unique, never-before-experienced in the universe? Rhythmic Brutalism.
When Atnif announced the release for Intolerant Red Marches on Instagram, she committed all the proceeds of the digital sales to the Los Angeles wildlife animal rescue & rehabilitation efforts underway in the wake of the terrible wildfire that ravaged the area, her now-home, which was something I could 100% get behind. She also put out a small edition of hand-dubbed cassettes, each with its own unique artwork. Both the digital and cassettes are available on her Bandcamp page HERE, so get over there and pick yourself up a copy of this gem and let it change how you think about music.