New Release
Black Smoker
For subbass recorder
and max/msp
on
Lucia Mense´s cd
ELECTRONIC COUNTERPOINT
Ulrich Krieger all rights reserved. Last updated 11/2011 contact
New Release
Black Smoker
For subbass recorder
and max/msp
on
Lucia Mense´s cd
ELECTRONIC COUNTERPOINT
Review from the sound projector
...Next comes the astonishing ‘Black Smoker’ composed by Ulrich Krieger, for me the most deeply affecting and successful piece on the release. California-based Krieger is, like O’Malley above, another musical omnivore who composes, improvises, plays chamber music and electronic music, and draws no boundaries between free noise, heavy metal and ambient music. His own career and experience in working the saxophone may have enabled him to compose music which is undoubtedly very sympathetic to the qualities of Mense’s sub-bass recorder. The ubiquitous MAX/MSP software was used to process the sound on this hymn to hydrothermal vents, fissures in the earth’s surface which exist on the ocean floor (I’m not making this up), and it’s a sumptuous long episode of slow-moving microtonal droning that must have required every last drop of Mense’s superhuman technical resource to realise. Put another way, she must have iron claws which grip the recorder like a mechanical derrick. And if you think playing a sub-bass recorder is a cinch, just try Googling for a picture of one; some of them are about ten feet tall and I doubt if I could even pick one up, let alone hold it in place. As to that, it might have been nice to provide some pictures of the instruments and performer in the booklet here, but the cover artworks by Frau W are suitably abstract and intriguing....
more reviews on: www.vitalweekly.com - www.musikderzeit.de
ULRICH KRIEGER
