Kristian Hultgren - bass/bass pedals/woodwinds - 1999+
Kristian is Wobbler’s bass player. He also dabbles with woodwinds like saxophone, bass clarinet and flute/recorder. He started his music career playing saxophone in his primary school’s marching band before meeting his partners in crime and fellow wobblers-to-be, Morten and Marius. The duo both played guitar, so he was faced with the question, bass guitar or drums? He choose the first and have never looked back. To this day he is a lousy guitarist. He has played in many genres, from jazz to pop and rock. He was part of Wobbler´s formation in 1999 alongside Lars, Morten and Martin.
Musical influences includes almost all genres, from classical music to black metal. He´s particularily fond of Händel and Ralph Vaughan-Williams, early recordings by Satyricon and modern post-metal outfits like Russian Circles and Elder.
Kristian has more equipment than strictly neccessary and some day he´ll relocate to a brick house with a barn in the countryside. Then he additionally wants a dog, a goat and a pig and hopefully some otters close by. His main basses are a 1973 Rickenbacker 4001, a 1963 Fender Precision and a custom built 60´s spec Jazz Bass.
"I´ve played in a lot of different genres, from event jobs via folk music in small venues to weird impro avant garde stuff in clubs. Nevertheless, I´ll always be a band musician at heart. Starting out with fellow wobblers Morten and Marius always made the band effort, playing original music, more satisfying for piece of mind and creative freedom. A previous band of notice is Spirits Of The Dead, where my love for the old school rock and stoner sound and slightly simpler song structures were combined.
More recently I´ve been live session bassist for Airbag and the Bjørn Riis solo project. Different styles of music from Wobbler but it´s nice to get the chance to engage in varied projects and play with different musicians."
"I´ve always loved tube amplifiers, although the digital revolution in bass amps has brought along a lot of nice sounding light weight amps. Still, a tube bass amp right before break up will always be hard to beat. I´ve tried to span my amps from low to medium and high wattage output. Low wattages amps are great for distorting the output tubes for the old school bass sound at a liveable volume. Sometimes headroom is the name of the game, so it´s nice to be able to choose. In Wobbler that´s not always easy since we cover a lot of musical ground. Live with Wobbler I prefer to use amps from 150 watts and up, but when traveling you need to be prepared to use whatever amp available and make it sound good."