News - get the latest Info on Erlend Krauser

Dear friends, I received a very good review for my Album "NO LIMITS" from the journalist Mimo Obradov. For the people who speak romanian, you can find it on Mimo Obradov´s facebook channel.

Here is the english translation of the review:

Erlend Krauser and his album No Limits, launched at the Timisoara Jazz Awards, October 2022

Erlend Krauser's music is an intimate expression, it is not thought and performed with the intention of conquering at first hearing, it is not addressed to a wide audience but it touches something in the listener's mind regardless of his condition and expectations. It seeps in and causes a fine vibration.
A whole life - his career spans 50 years! - has been dedicated to the one great love he has never given up on and has never refused himself, either when it has dragged him through the existential mire or when it has isolated him in solitude. With the guitar in his arms and the melodic and harmonic overflow of his imagination, he felt like a magnet during those trying years. It wasn't easy for him to shake off all the experience gathered during his apprenticeship years with Pro Musica, KPK, Phoenix, Madhouse, Lake... I think it was also difficult to adapt to the rigorus of professional work in a top big band like The James Last Orchestra, with whom he shone on the world's biggest stages. It was by no means easy for him to seek and find his ideal personal expression in the hidden recesses of his own duende. He had, as he admitted in interviews, the revelation that every artist dreams of: the encounter with his own soul. Since then music has been running through his fingers on the guitar strings, the vibrations of his touch have become sound waves carrying the spell. Without limits. No Limits is the title of the album he worked on for almost two years during the pandemic.
For the past few months I've caught myself listening, not systematically, passionately or obsessively, to the same album, a string of 10 songs to which I spontaneously return. I pressed the key and a whisper of a tone slipped discreetly into the speakers in feedback, which then shaped the form of one of the most beautiful musical creations expressed with the electric guitar. Is this the Angel? The title requires no explanation, the key element being ? the question mark. Could this be the motivation for all that he has imagined, honed and strung together in an imaginary shrine, hidden from the sight but not from the acuity of the listener's senses? At a time when all sorts of limits were imposed on us, music helped us to free ourselves from the captivity dictated by the logic of the pretzel. The box of beautiful memories has been opened, with the sun mirrored on the surface of the ocean somewhere in Alhambra (Remembering Alhambra), with echoes of flamenco and the beating of wings.
Some people... When a sentence starts like that you can expect something negative. So it is with the Some People song, one of the few, if not the only, committed, militant piece by Erlend Krauser, in which he takes a stand against a situation that irritates not only him but much of humanity. This is a mind blowing screenplay/Welcome to "1984", a new age/Directed by a bunch of ill knaves/Who'd like to see us all as slaves. The message is one of not accepting the limitations (bans) imposed, of facing the unmasked evil generated from the sick minds of the new knights of the Round Planet. Happiness is here, we just have to acknowledge it and enjoy what life offers us (Groovy Day). With detachment but also with the nostalgia of one who caught the Golden Generation train/spirit, the mirage of flower power utopia. It was a train that passed through the world but did not arrive behind the Iron Curtain, but whose jerky howl on the tracks of rock music was also heard here where the thirst for freedom was so great. I'm from the Golden Generation/ jumped on the flower power train/got blessed, an angry peaceful rebel/ escaped the madness, broke the chain.
Erlend chose freedom not only in the field of creation but also in living according to his own convictions, doing good through music and sharing, expressing wonder and admiration for the Great Force, Nature and Man. To succeed he chose to relate to the vertical scale (Up There). The last part of this very dense but at the same time extremely clear album for the listener I perceived as a ritual in three stages: the delirious reality (Dancing Horses - an unleashing of virtuosity), the prayer (Love & Light Mantra) and the liberation/salvation (It's now).
It's hard, even futile, to draw a conclusion after listening to an album in which you recognize so many superlative elements: from the simple, pared-down construction of the rhythmic accompaniment, to the airy harmonic perfection, to the understated but vibrantly atmospheric sound effects, to the clear, unambiguous message-carrying vocal parts (with slight references to David Bowie and Peter Gabriel) and, finally, to the guitar hooked straight into the soul. Yes, No Limits is a guitar album, but a different one. I've studied and appreciated the art of several guitarist-authors but Erlend Krauser's way of embodying this instrument is unique not only in terms of the technique he plays with. I've never heard anything like it. I'm not claiming he's the most... I'm sure he would disagree. But I'm glad he is.

The album NO LIMITS is exclusively available in my online shop on my website www.erlendkrauser.de