Flying Luttenbachers - The Orchestra of the Apocalypse

If we start from the premise that in music almost nothing is created, nothing destroyed, but everything is transformed, then we can only crown Weasel Walter (born Christopher Todd Walter) as one of the most brilliant alchemists of recent years — nearly fifteen years spent in the company of his work are enough to launch him into the imaginary pantheon of the wildest Gods Of Chaos of contemporary avant-rock.

Let's be clear: the real revolution was led decades ago by Mr. Ayler, who, packaging the music of Ornette Coleman and co. — as well as his own on Esp — into a (already) "rock" format, set a decisive course for the development of border-crossing, heterodox sounds, by their very nature suited to becoming a site of contamination.

The magnificent electric records on Impulse — "New Grass", "Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe", "The Last Album" — though poorly digested at the time by an incorruptible yet numerous fringe of purists, contain the seeds of what no wave, Zorn, but also Brotzmann, and therefore Weasel, would go on to bring to completion: a kind of incestuous bond between border-crossing jazz, by now so stylistically warped as to be no longer recognizable as such, and a structure we might call rock, which retains of rock only the form, along with its communicative punch. A cerebral yet, at the same time, visceral music, capable of stimulating both body and mind, like the best metal — a genre that would, in fact, be co-opted by Zorn in the experiments of Naked City and Painkiller. And we're especially fond of recalling the masterpieces "Torture Garden" and "Guts Of A Virgin".

Where do the Flying Luttenbachers fit into this evolutionary narrative? Well, far from wanting to force them into the history books, it's nonetheless clear how important the gang of reprobates led by Weasel Walter really was. Fully aware of what had come before, the Flying Luttenbachers "simply" had the merit of grafting onto the fabric of an already extremely degraded music the seed of 80s American indie-rock, and especially of everything that orbited around hardcore — all this, of course, taking as a given the heavy legacy of late-Seventies New York negativism. Try focusing on "Brainstorm" from the remarkable Constructive Destruction, and you'll feel like you're listening to a hypertrophic version of the Minutemen.

Buoyed by an initial breaking-in period well represented by the tracks on Live At WNUR 2-6-92, with veteran jazz saxophonist Hal Russell in the lineup (he would pass away in September '92), and by the subsequent 7-inches 546 Seconds Of Noise and 1389 Seconds Of Noise, the Flying Luttenbachers arrive at the aforementioned Constructive Destruction with a lineup featuring Weasel himself on drums, Chad Organ (saxophone), Ken Vandermark (saxophone and clarinet), Jeb Bishop (bass and trombone) and Dylan Posa (guitar). It was dubbed punk-jazz, and indeed, in this first incarnation, the Flying Luttenbachers amuse themselves smearing distortion and noisy debris across a classically "free-jazz" sonic framework. Although the Chicago quintet's iconoclastic frenzy manages to surface in practically every track, with particularly vicious fury on "First Through Glass", where a backdrop of guitar distortion accompanies the breakneck twists of sax and trombone, we're still far from the structural complexity that would come to define the mature Luttenbachers. Still tied to Zorn-like canons are the opening "The Critic Stomp", which sounds like a remarkable "offcut" from early Naked City, as well as "The Indiscrete Notion".

With the cassette Live At WNUR 2-6-92, the 7-inches 546 Seconds Of Noise and 1389 Seconds Of Noise, and the debut LP Constructive Destruction, the apprenticeship phase comes to an end.

1995, the watershed year. While Vandermark scales back his involvement, Weasel pushes his experimentation further, diving even deeper into noise-no wave territory. The music of Destroy All Music, equally indebted to free-jazz and to the abrasions of Dna and Contorsions, helps forge that Skin Graft sound (the label for which they would release several works), which would stand as one of the highest expressions of 90s avant-rock. Tracks like "Demonic Velocities/20,000,000 Volts", besides pushing right to the edge of the unlistenable, pave the way for a multitude of bands, alongside the performances of other contemporary acts such as the formidable Arab On Radar, to name just one. And then there's "Dance Of The Lonely Hyenas", which advances through an escalating noise progression, gathering up every kind of spastic offshoot along the way, before sinking into a magma of noise that renders any single influence indistinguishable.

Free-jazz, while remaining a foundational element within the economy of the Luttenbachers sound, gets sublimated by languages that had only been used marginally before. The minute and a half or so of "Sparrows Thin Ict" seals the metamorphosis for good, turning whatever free-jazz residue remained into dull, deafening noise. Far from representing some apocalyptic fin de siècle sensationalism, the track further expands the semantic range of the Flying Luttenbachers, who, while establishing themselves as skilled reworkers of the Ayler tradition, also hint at a possible power-noise future. But it should be made clear that our heroes would never give in to the genre's allure, even while moving through somewhat adjacent territory. Take note, Fat Worm Of Error, as talented as they are, along with Nervous Cop and the many free-noisers who nowadays flirt with the most uncompromising no wave.

Destroy All Music, the first but not the only masterpiece by the Flying Luttenbachers, changed the face of American indie-rock, opening up an entire universe of sound.

What could possibly come after Destroy All Music? Weary repetition? Self-indulgence? Commercial temptations? Weasel senses a creeping self-satisfaction setting in and sets the turnover in motion, bringing in Chuck Falzone (guitar) and Bill Pisarri (bass, violin and clarinet).

Revenge Of The Flying Luttenbachers, from '96, celebrates the marriage with Skin Graft in the best possible way, giving rise, without mincing words, to the second masterpiece of the Flying Luttenbachers. Buoyed by the new lineup and a lycanthropic experimental hunger, Weasel Walter goes further even while taking an (apparent) step back. Piero Scaruffi offers a precise description of Weasel and co.'s renewed idiom: "...The sound has abandoned the jazz colors of the early works, in favor of a more experimental and miniaturistic approach, in the style of the punk-jazz of God Is My Co-Pilot...". And it's true. If we compare the tracks on this record with the long digressions of Constructive Destruction, the difference is plain to see. While the early Flying essentially played a(pro)gressive free-jazz, betraying an attitudinal and stylistic kinship with Brotzmann, Zorn, the Borbetomagus of "Borbeto Jam", on Revenge Weasel Walter's punk-wave roots emerge forcefully.

And it's rock with no quotation marks, finally real rock, drinking deeply from Contortions, Pop Group, Dna, God Is My Co-Pilot of course, Beefheart, Rip Rig And Panic, Minutemen, industrial, grindcore... Everything is calibrated to produce terrifying sounds: from Pisarri's bass, which relentlessly pumps out funk-noise Babylons, to Weasel's spasmodic drumming, right down to Chuck Falzone's abrasive, unbearable guitar.

The Flying Luttenbachers take no prisoners either on the following Gods Of Chaos, their third (and final) masterpiece, where music truly becomes pure sonic sign, a semiotic testimony to the "end of the world" or whatever other oddity was running through the genius madman's mind at the time. The sound thickens further still, becoming cataclysmic noise, an inspiration for numerous art-noise outfits (true, Lightning Bolt?).

The Flying would seem like a genuine orchestra of the apocalypse, were it not that this writer has always detected in that iconoclastic sonic arrogance a kind of slyly concealed sarcasm.

Personal opinions aside, Gods Of Chaos is an extreme record, beyond which lies the disintegration of music as a discrete, recognizable entity. One step further, and you'd reach the border between "played" sounds and field recordings gathered on a building site, so to speak. Somebody really ought to grasp that there's a difference...

The styles merge into a single incandescent magma born of the collision between atonal guitars and robotic proto-industrial rhythms, and if you find yourselves immune to headaches, try tackling tracks "6", "9" and "10" (there are no titles), marked by Weasel Walter's relentlessly impenetrable drumming, a war machine forever pushed to the limit yet rarely over-revving. Either way, no album title was ever more apt.

Gods Of Chaos marks the end of the band's major period, so unless you're a fan of the group or a devotee of the genre (?), you can stop here. It's not that things descend into mediocrity, but from here on the Flying Luttenbachers' sound won't offer any great qualitative surprises. Actually, with a bit of patience, you could push on as far as the following …The Truth Is A Fucking Lie…, which for this writer is a genuine little gem. The sound regresses in terms of destructive violence, while a decisive, renewed and incredibly inventive free-jazz streak resurfaces, underpinned by electronic backing tracks recorded during various shows. The effect is disorienting, especially compared to what the Flying Luttenbachers had accustomed us to. The band reinvents much of what had been composed and played by the old lineup, through processes of cut-up, remixing and recontextualization, but also of complete transfiguration.

Suitably manipulated, the Flying Luttenbachers' electronics recall some of the more "restless" side of Varese, as is easily heard in the gorgeous cover of Havohej's "Black Perversion". Weasel's post-post-modern record has been served.

And from here, seriously, you can move on, unless you're a diehard fanatic beyond any hope of redemption. What follows is a series of releases that, for this writer, are minor but never less than dignified: from the strongly free-jazz acoustic improvisations of Alptraum (live) and Trauma, to the monstrous death/dark progressive of Infection And Decline, featuring new collaborators from the progressive school Alex Perkolup and Jonathan Hischke, which sounds like furious jams between King Crimson, Ruins and Magma; then comes Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder, essentially a Weasel solo album, where our man floors the accelerator on prog-death tropes, notable for the endless, inhuman jam "Rise Of The Iridescent Behemoth"; and finally the mediocre Eruption, a noise sludge made in collaboration with Kevin Drumm, and 2004's Void, marked by an unparalleled sonic bulimia.

Too much going on at once, as if Weasel were trying to conceive a new kind of total music by scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Some of the releases briefly discussed here are still worth a listen, if not a purchase, even though they lack the mad genius that characterized the Flying Luttenbachers in their early years and at their peak. While the records running from Constructive Destruction to …The Truth Is A Fucking Lie… form a (more or less consciously) coherent evolutionary arc, from Alptraum onward Weasel seems to proceed by trial and error, trying to develop on multiple levels the potential of a now well-honed sound, within a stylistic enclosure that is broad but clearly defined.

Although new Flying Luttenbachers releases are no longer so eagerly awaited, the collaboration with Mick Barr of Orthrelm on the EP Spectral Warrior Mythos Volume One holds particular importance, and must have invigorated Weasel's creative genius.

Not that we're expecting a masterpiece, and indeed Cataclysm, anno domini 2006, while not quite reaching that level, does mark the Flying Luttenbachers' return to excellent quality. Possessed by his usual creative egocentric fervor, our man presents himself at the helm of a partially renewed lineup, the fruit of the collaborations set in motion over the previous years. If we're not mistaken, the current lineup should include bassist Mike Green of Burmese and guitarist Ed Rodrigues of Gorge Trio, Colossamite, Iceburn, both already featured on The Void. On top of that, the six-string of Mick "the new Steve Vai" Barr, of Orthrelm, Crom Tech, and more, standing alongside Weasel on the EP Spectral Warrior Mythos Volume One. Seasoned figures who indeed put together a genuine time bomb.

If the Flying Luttenbachers' most recent efforts had shown signs of running out of steam, Cataclysm arrives as an uncompromising, high-voltage concentrate of mutant punkgrindnowavefreefazz. Nothing wildly new compared to the past, except that here we're facing one of their most devastating works, tight yet also hard to digest. Barr and Rodrigues's guitars erupt in stinging dissonances at the speed of light, though at times they get lost in overly cerebral digressions that undermine the listenability of the tracks, as in the excessively frenetic "From Oblivion". Still, they express the mathematical coldness typical of the most creative metal, as "Demonic Velocities", "Insektoid Horror" and "The Elimination Of Incompetence" demonstrate.

Weasel ventures into unusual territory by covering Messiaen with "Movement Four Of L'ascension", a moment of relative calm after six tracks of auditory slaughter, and in the two parts of "Regime", a kind of cathartic punkmetalspacemusic. Weasel Walter's admirers can rest easy: it seems his genius is still far from running dry.

In recent years Walter has mainly been active on his own (although Incarceration By Abstraction from 2007 is credited to Flying Luttenbachers) and alongside guitarist Mary Halvorson (“Opulence”, 2008).

Note: for a more detailed discography including collaborations and/or appearances on compilations, please refer to the following webpage.

Among the various compilations they took part in, of particular interest is the 2001 double “Troubleman Mix Tape”, featuring bands of the caliber of: Lightning Bolt, Burmese, Cromtech, XBXRX, Black Dice, The Cranium, The Locust, Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater, Erase Errata, Subtonix, Bride of No No, Total Shutdown, Pink and Brown.

Also worth noting is Weasel's participation in Lake Of Dracula (“Lake Of Dracula” LP/CD Skin Graft 199), with members of Scissor Girl and others, and in Hatewave, a death-grind metal act from Chicago.

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