What would this poor raconteur do without gentlemen like Herr Ulrich Krieger, saxophone master, who personally send their music in lieu of unwilling (or distracted, or linked to some unsympathetic individual) labels? Danke, Uli.
ULRICH KRIEGER – Up & Down 23
The composition is scored for four superimposed soprano saxophones, handled – of course – by Krieger. It is explained that playing the CD at the extremes of the audible range warrants the best consequence for this particular recording: soft volume to get a sort of microtonal ambient, loud for a deeper psychoacoustic experience characterized by adjacent tones, minimal shifts and subtly spurious vibration according to our position in the room during the playback. Either way, listening to this music results in a calming, comforting practice: the timbral textures modify their fundamental nature just slightly, in non-harmful fashion, and there aren’t surprises of any kind; yet a full hour flies away without us noticing, surrounded as we are by layers of contiguous pitches in different combinations – including solo sections – and several short moments of silence, especially at the beginning and end of the piece. I’ve read rather superficial hints to Phill Niblock’s influence on this work elsewhere but there’s not much here that might resemble, even remotely, an imposing accumulation of neighbouring frequencies such as those created by the minister of all drones, though some of those principles are indeed applied. Up & Down 23 is more of a study, a careful examination of the relations between emitted notes and resonating spaces. An alleviating, under no circumstance overwhelming listen. (B-Boim)
PURE NOISE / ART ZOYD STUDIO – Experiences De Vol #7
This release was received on a CDR and I couldn’t succeed in opening the files containing the liners. What I managed to gather by surfing the web is that the work is a new chapter in an ongoing project started in 2000 under the “Experiences De Vol” denomination. All that remains is describing the sonic content, which equals to say “read above”: noise, noise and again noise, of the thoroughly brutal variety, the kind of uproar which Merzbow would be envious of. Ulrich Krieger opens with possibly the most regimented track (so to speak), in which the saxophone is used as a generator of stormy rumbles in somewhat regulated perniciousness. Kasper T. Toeplitz follows with a rather musical crescendo of distorted droning, whose might is inversely proportional to the innovative qualities of the music, yet this is maybe the album’s best in terms of sheer aural gratification; very dominant indeed. Dror Feiler pulverizes the remnants of our auricular membranes with a lengthy, furious mega-blast that utilizes different gradations of acridness and rage to blow the socks off the listeners, who get caught without shelter by repeated fusillades of nasty substances that, once meshed, almost give an idea of quaking stasis. Other players involved are Carol Robinson, Laurent Dailleau, Jérôme Soudan, Erik Baron and Carl Faia. Overall, a perfect way for starting a litigation with the neighbours or abruptly shutting the communication channels up with your life partner. (Art Zoyd/In-possible)
