Album Notes

Saxophonist/composer/sound artist Briggan Krauss attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music performance in 1992. While in Seattle he met and worked with many great musicians, many of whom he still works with today (Eyvind Kang, Robin Holcolmb, Mike Sarin, Skerik and Bill Frisell to name a few), and he also began his long association with Wayne Horvitz when he joined his legendary avant electric group "Pig Pen". In 1994 Briggan moved to Brooklyn, New York where he still lives today.
Besides leading his own projects, Briggan is a founding member of the legendary group "Sex Mob" and has performed and recorded with musicians such as John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Skerik, Eyvind Kang, Robin Holcomb, Anthony Coleman, Madeski Martin and Wood, Skuli Sverrisson, Jim Black, Ikue Mori, Joey Baron, Kato Hideki, Satoko Fuji, the New York Composer’s Orchestra and many others.
As a studio musician Briggan can be heard on several recordings by artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Trey Anastasio, Joan Wasser, Antony. Briggan has also participated in several shows produced by Hal Willner including tributes to Neil Young, Doc Pomus and Leonard Cohen which featured artists such as Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson, Beth Orton and Cat Power among many others.
Briggan has made records as a leader on Knitting Factory Records, self-released records of sound art compositions and has appeared on over forty other recordings as a sideman.
Briggan’s next recording project “300” featured another trio which reunited Briggan with “Pig Pen” leader Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, and added fellow “Sex Mob” member Kenny Wollesen on drums. Recording for the Knitting Factory record label in 1997, “300” garnered notable critical acclaim for their self-titled debut recording culminating in making the “Jazziz Magazine Critic’s Top-Ten recordings of 1998” list twice.

Reviews of Briggan Krauss' "300".

"The way he creeps along with trance-like mysticism in and out of Horvitz's trippy keys on "First Grain" or blasts toward the cosmos on the outstanding "Toy Boat" -- his meteoric flight bounding off Horvitz's power chords like a Fender Strat overdriven through a Marshall double stack -- sounds like little else in modern jazz. It's as if he's channeling the ferocious energy of a Seattle grunge storm and halloing it with an uncanny lyrical shimmer."
-Sam Prestianni, Jazziz, March 1999.


“When it comes to experimental out-jazz, the music is fervent enough, obscure enough, and far enough ahead of it’s time that religious metaphors are in order. And if Seattle’s standard out-jazz musicians are minor prophets (the musical equivalent of Billy Graham), than the OK Hotel’s Krauss-Horvitz-Wollesen lineup is like Jesus playing with Mohammed, backed by Buddha on the drums and Moses on the keys. It’s that deep.”
-Nathan Thornburgh, The Stranger, Sept. 7-13, 2000.

"...Waldo the Boy Alligator Wrestler (Briggan Krauss) is a sick puke!"
-Ink 19, Gainesville Florida. May. 1998