Since the mid 1970's, RANDY GREIF has been pushing the boundaries of auditory arts, often incorporating electronic, computer and concrete music with spoken word, "sound theater", and field recordings.  Location recordings in places such as Amazonia, New Guinea, and Thailand have found their way, often manipulated, into some of Greif's music, branding it as "tribal" electronics.  Trademark styles are dense layers of atmospherics, cut-up vocals, and shifting minimal rhythms. "Dark" and "hallucinatory" are often used to describe the overall tone of his work.

In 1983 Greif started SWINGING AXE PRODUCTIONS (SAP) to release his own work and those of like-minded artists. During the first few years a handful of cassette-only releases were available, including Controlled Bleeding, Merzbow, Illusion Of Safety, and various alias names Greif was recording under. CLEM reviewed "It's In A Box" his first cassette release as "one of the top 3 tapes to come out stateside... it rivals anything put out by Sterile or United Dairies." As for Screaming Dukduks (an early alias) which was released simultaneously with "It's In A Box" CLEM said "...a purely shocking tape...sucks you in then mesmerizes you."

The cassettes to follow were received with similar positive reviews. Besides releasing more cassettes of strictly music, Greif released more conceptual and crossover work. A collaboration with writer Alva Svoboda titled "East Green Proof" used Svoboda's disturbing poems in which his readings were manipulated and set against electronic atmospheres. The Magnetic Spine Review / Wireless Spine Review invited sound artists from around the world to call a telephone answering machine and do a 30-second performance which was amplified for a live audience. 

Also released was location recordings from Papua New Guinea which featured not only indigenous music but folk stories, theater and a church meeting in Pidgin English. This was the first of several such releases, the other two being from Amazonia and Thailand.

The first album done for another label was his "Bacteria and Gravity" for the RRR label in 1987 on which the second side is one long piece filled with tribal rhythms, other-worldly voices and odd sounds such a bullfrog and car horn. Shortly after this release, Greif teamed up with Mikail Bohonus of WarWorld to form STATIC EFFECT who performed improvisationally around loosely defined musical structures. They toured North America and Canada and released a number of cassettes and vinyl before disbanding in 1990. By this time Greif had begun work on his most ambitious project to date--a 6 hour musical and textural setting for Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland". The spoken text is often deconstructed into phonemes of pure sound and then returned to recognizable words. This project took 5 years and the CDs were released serially on the Staalplaat label in special packaging. Reviewers had the following to say about the series -

"...as close to the dream experience as music ever gets."

"Disturbing and nightmarish..."

"has to be heard to be believed...I've never heard such an entertaining album..."

"Randy Greif has taken the Lewis Carroll classic and brought it to levels never before imaginable."

"All five CDs deserve to go down in history as a classic..."

The next CD, " The Barnacles Inside", also on the Staalplaat label, was released in 1994. Again this release had special oversized packaging. Although most tracks on this CD incorporate manipulated voices, there is no discernible text. About this same time Greif began a project with Dan Burke of Illusion Of Safety, which after a year of collaborating by exchanging sequences, sounds, and tapes through the mail resulted in "Fragment 56". The intention of this project was to use environ- mental sounds, voices, and atmospheres to create the feeling of a memory or a dream not wholly remembered. Shortly after this release, a split CD with Greif and Illusion Of Safety came out titled "In Our Little Bodies". Greif's material here was closer to "song structure" but that definitely does not mean you will find such luxuries as melody, choruses, and harmonies. They are highly claustrophobic and obsessive shorter pieces, some of which again feature the voice of Alva Svoboda, sampled and manipulated. This CD was also released in special oversized packaging.

Randy Greif's "Verdi's Requiem" was released on the Soleilmoon label in Nov. 1997. This is an attempt to abstract the events of Verdi's life in terms of music. The events, however, are all imagined by Greif, and actually did not happen. This CD is released in a standard jewel case but is printed on custom translucent paper. 

Along the way, Greif has participated with a group called His Masters Voice (or alternately Stylus) and they have released a CD on Manifold and are featured on a CD from Freedom In A Vacuum / Swinging Axe called "Globus and Decibel". Greif's work also appears on numerous compilations, notably "To Step Outside And Keep Walking" which has approximately 20 minutes of exclusive material. 

In 1999, Soleilmoon released a 3-CD set wherein Randy collaborated with Robin Storey (of Rapoon / Zoviet France) and Nigel Ayers (of Nocturnal Emissions). This CD explores a very ambient side of their work, but retains a disturbing edge. (see interview  ) For one of the 3 CDs, Randy used Nigel’s source material, a second was created by Robin using Randy’s, and the third had Nigel using Robin’s material. Ambientrance has this to say..."those who are inclined toward amorphous, evolving sound entities with a freakish life of their own will find a strange new world within this box of twisted dreamscapes." (see complete review ) 

Randy Greif also released a CD on Soleilmoon in 1999 under the name of Shadowbug 4, titled "Tiny Voices Of Love And Fear". These lean more towards song structure, although the instrumental tracks push the limits of that definition. The only vocals used are extremely chopped up and manipulated electronically. An Ambientrance review begins with "Under the monicker of Shadowbug 4, Randy Greif speaks in a dark, unknown tongue, understandable only by the most primal senses." and ends with "... keeps the decidedly warped overtones of Tiny Voices Of Love And Fear fresh for future contemplations of isolation and insanity, or whatever morbid conditions you choose to read into these bleak waves of sound."   (see complete review )

The long out-of-print 5 CD set of Alice In Wonderland has been re-issued on Soleilmoon in 2000. All five cds are presented together as a boxed set and have been re-mastered for this release. Randy Greif created completely new artwork for his CDs, as well as a set of "Alice in Wonderland" trading cards that are published in conjunction with the release. Five cards are included with each box set, and individual packs of cards (to complete the set of sixty) are available through Soleilmoon.

2001 saw the release of Randy Greif’s "War Of The World" on Soleilmoon. As a follow-up to his 6 hour electro-psycho adaptation of "Alice In Wonderland", Greif returns to putting classic literature through the sonic meat-grinder. This time around, though, the work is far more abstracted, and uses the novel as more of a springboard for contemporary ideas relating to war--on a global level, a psychological level, and our own resistance to evolving from organic to digital beings. 

Even more than the novel itself, Greif incorporates the Orson Welles radio-drama hoax to explore the realm of dis-information and scrambled information, as well as the audience reaction of fear, even to the point of suicide, when faced with the unknown. "War Of The World" is subtitled "an emergency broadcast" as its overall effect was to approximate the feeling of listening to radio transmissions in an emergency situation (inspired during the Northridge earthquake). The feeling is sometimes a jumbled confusion of reports, snippets of speech with interference, electronic noises, and other mysterious bits and pieces. Then, later, to actually meld into the emergency drama itself complete with (non-musical) soundtrack. But don’t expect a book-on-tape sort of thing--not even close. 

"War of the World is a dense, demanding deconstruction that's part audio collage, part political treatise, part industrial symphony and altogether ahead of its time."--Sci Fi Channel review 

Also in 2001, Randy Greif released the second Shadowbug 4 CD, titled "We Are Beginning Our Descent", and continues his themes of depression and anxt by way of dark ambience, slow beats, glitchy electronics and cut-up voices. There are even a few moments here of odd orchestral arrangements amid the pulses and unrecognizable sounds. The Guide has this to say--This CD enters the territory of folks like Bill Laswell, Mick Harris / Scorn, Eraldo Bernocchi, DJ Spooky... jazzy hip-hop drums, weird noises, dubbed out guitars, bleeps 'n' bloops, string riffs, and the bass...Randy had moved into the territory of some master beathandlers, which could be a losing effort for him, but it's not. He handles the material with aplomb...This is a top-notch release. I've listened to it several times and (no higher praise, really) included tracks from it on mix CDs I've made for others."  review