"[Krieger] ranges wide as he seeks the spots where noise and beauty meet" Anne Power, Los Angeles Times

Ulrich Krieger

Ulrich Krieger is an internationally recognized German composer and saxophonist living in Southern California. He is known for his originality and innovation in composed and free improvised contemporary music. As a celebrated composer of chamber and electronic music, Krieger’s compositions are widely performed by ensembles in Europe and the USA. He works in a variety of contexts; from new and experimental music to free improvisation, electronic music, reductionism, noise, ambient, rock and metal.
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, and Merzbow, in in addition to leading his own death-doom-noise-metal band Blood Oath.
In his distinct style of amplified saxophone playing, Krieger processes refined acoustic and quasi-electronic sounds by amplifying his instrument in various ways. He gets down to the grains of the sounds, changing their identities and structures from within. No saxophone the player has ever dared to explore these uncharted outer realms of woodwind expression. Outside Krieger’s solo practice, he has performed extensively with his groups Metal Machine Trio and Text of Light. He has collaborated and performed with Lou Reed, Faust, Merzbow, Thomas Köner, Carl Stone, John Zorn, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, Laurie Anderson, La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Radu Malfatti, Michael Pisaro, Berlin Philharmonics, Ensemble Modern, PARTCH Ensemble, and many more. As a saxophonist he has performed in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia. Krieger studied classical/contemporary saxophone, composition, electronic music, and musicology in Berlin and New York. He is professor for composition, Experimental Sound Practices, and rock music at CalArts, where his special field of interest is the cross-pollination of new art music and avant-garde rock. Krieger’s recent focus lies on the fringes of contemporary rock culture, in the areas of limbo where noise, metal, silence, and experimental chamber music meet. Not accepting stylistic categories, Krieger’s practice operates in the margins of 21st century genres while resisting the problematic trappings of appropriation. His compositional approaches include micro- sounds, microtones, reductionism, ‘instrumental electronics’ (instrumental music evoking the soundworld of electronics), drone, and noise; forms that often demand elaborate and nuanced amplification.

Blood Oath is a noise-metal band, led by Ulrich Krieger, hovering freely between death and doom metal, noise, dark ambient and experimental composition.
Blood Oath is a modular band and had played shows in various combinations from electric sax/drums duo to larger formats with two guitars, bass and several electric string players.
Blood Oath creatively ignores the conventions of the various styles and genres and combines them into a new, exciting and exhilarating ambient-noise-metal format, where composition is as important as improvisation, density meets sparseness, and thick noise sheets trade off with precisely written riffs.
Blood Oath re-defines the saxophone as an electric rock instrument, being processed through a pedal board, replacing an electric guitar.
Blood Oath is relentless.

www.ulrich-krieger.com