Ulrich Krieger: electric tenor saxophone, saxophone-controlled feedback, pedals, delays; 1/4-inch jack cable, vocals; Joshua Carro, drums (CD 1, tracks 3, 5).
CD 1: RAW
CD 2: ReSpace
“[Krieger] ranges wide as he seeks the spots where noise and beauty meet” Anne Power, Los Angeles Times
RAW/ReSpace is the first-ever experimental noise-metal saxophone solo album, changing and re-defining how the saxophone can sound and what saxophone playing means. No saxophone player ever dared to explore these uncharted outer realms of woodwind expression. RAW brings together noisescapes and electronica with death and doom metal approaches and contemporary instrumental composition techniques. While ReSpace combines dark ambient, controlled-feedback soundscapes with a reductionist approach to create eerie ambient sound-fields. All sounds are saxophone-produced and performed live, no sampling and no purely electronic sounds. RAW and ReSpace are part of the ongoing Universe series.
Ulrich Krieger is well known as a saxophone player in rock, noise, contemporary composed and free improvised music as well as a composer of chamber music and electronic music. He has been active in pushing the boundaries of saxophone playing in general and the function of the saxophone in rock and noise in particular, collaborating with Lou Reed (Metal Machine Trio, Lou Reed Band), Lee Ranaldo (Text of Light), Faust, Zbigniew Karkowski and his own death-doom-noise-metal band Blood Oath. His recent focus lies in the experimental fields and fringes of contemporary Pop culture: somewhere in the limbo between Noise and Heavy Metal, Ambient and Silence. His original compositions go back and forth between Just Intonation, Silent Music, Noise, Instrumental Electronic, often asking for elaborate amplification, and works in the limbo of Rock culture – not accepting stylistic boundaries. Krieger developed his own, often amplified style of saxophone playing, he calls “acoustic electronics”. He uses refined acoustic, quasi-electronic sounds, which then get processed, the saxophone often becoming more an “analogue sampler” rather than a traditional finger-virtuoso instrument. By amplifying his instrument in various ways, he gets down to the ‘grains of the sounds’, changing their identity and structure from within.
“When Ulrich introduced his “acoustic electronic” concept, there was another door blown wide open, and another glorious field of pure expression revealed. There is an openness, and a level of abstraction to the music that leaves room for “me” to exist within the music; I can bring my own associations, patterns and inner visuals — and let it blend, mutate and morph into the intended delivery from the artist. The acoustic element in Ulrich’s music makes the sonic reality deeper, as the organic qualities of acoustic-to-electronic resonate with the mind and flesh in a way electronic-to-electronic cannot.” (Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved, from the liner notes)