Originally founded in 1991 as a punk
jazz trio, The Flying Luttenbachers have since gone on to become
something of a reclusive, sub-underground phenomenon (maybe that’s
what the title of this album is refers to?), releasing 17 records
of innovative, envelope-pushing free-jazz laced, death-prog soundscapes
all complemented by vibrant and visually stunning artwork. In
their various guises they have involved a floating cast of sonic
freedom fighters and jazz-warriors including Ken Vandermark (Witches
and Devils, Vandermark 5) and Mick Barr (Octis, Ocrilim, Crom-Tech)
but their latest (and possibly final) album ‘Incarceration
by Abstraction’ is amazingly the sole work of one Weasel
Walter. Originally intended to feature both Mick Barr and/or Ed
Rodriguez, neither musician was available so instead of shelf
the project, Weasel Walter defied these restraints and recorded
definitive solo versions of each piece for the sake of documentation!
The
first thing that will strike Luttenbacher fans of old about this
8 track, 44 minute release is just how downright cohesive and
powerful it sounds, I mean, listen hard enough and you’ll
even uncover a few grooves! The chunky production work is a definite
contributing factor as it strips away most of the raw-to-the-bone
harshness in favour of rounded basses and sharp but not piercing
trebles placed in a wider soundstage. Mainly though, it is the
fact that song structures are rooted in the energetic skeleton
of epic noisecore. This strategy creates a loose structure which
is fleshed out by attacks of ultra-spazzed, angular instrumentation
that utilises complex drum patterns and highly unorthodox time
signatures to create an unadulterated slice of brutal prog with
a mathrock dynamic. Sounding like a nothing-to-lose Don Cabellero
or Oxes that are being forced at gunpoint to play for their lives
after being raised on a strict diet of Anaal Nathrakh and early
Rush, ‘Incarcertation by Abstraction’ explodes forth
with a menacing, no-holds barred intent. Frenzied riffs swirl
uncharted within throbbing and immensely varied percussives that
move from grindcore to free jazz arrangements in a bat of an eyelid
whilst hypnotic inside-out melodies dart unrestrained, dragging
the listener into the music’s sphere of cosmic-meltdown
and sonic discontent.
‘Electrocution’
encapsulates the devilish jazz-prog dynamic perfectly with splintered
and clashing harmonics engaging in epic battle, a soundscape that
is gradually supplemented by further instrumental turbulence.
Refreshingly, the whole entity of agitated sound drops into a
downtuned bout of bombast mayhem that reminds one of an irate
‘Behold The Arctopus’. If the previous two tracks
hinted at it, ‘Medusa’ fully embraces the metallic
agenda, chugging along forcefully like a twisted ghost-train propelled
by a foundation of grinding bass, pulsing riffage, disharmonious
anti-melodies and shattering percussives that creates a black-metal
meets noisecore meets spazz-jazz sound a bit like Teen Cthulhu
placed in a kaleidoscopic musical blender. Steeped in a hardcore
punk aesthetic, ‘Violent Shade’s’ cloaked death-prog
melodics yo-yo heroically across the scales with such ferocious
intensity it is like the sound is continuously running away from
you, the listener trying in vein to capture it. ‘Triplex’
follows suit with its meandering string-based anti-melodies that
branch out in a sporadic fast-forward motion that helps the track
charge ahead with a sociopathic momentum that fully manipulates
the disorientating power of tempo switches and off-kilter, hyper-complex
drumming. After
the head-nodding and dizzying, doom-laden rock’n’drone
of ‘Crypt Emission’ which features Weasel Walter in
animated drumming mode, the story moves on to the anti-melodious
cosmic swirl of ‘The Serialization of Cruelty’; a
head-rotating, 8bit mash of angular instrumental abstraction.
What then appears from the speakers is a real ear-opener as ‘The
First Time’ commences with the soothing, atmospheric vocals
of Aurora Josephson seeping out and drifting across an ever intensifying
soundscape of noir-ish, metallic mathcore before being lost in
a heavily manipulated Mr Bungle-ish coalescence of Jonathan Joe’s
comic operatic vocals.
With ‘Incarceration for Abstraction’,
Weasel Walter has kept committed to the out-and-out intensity
of previous offerings but spiced things up by experimenting with
new sounds. He has successfully scored and produced an epic body
of psyched-out battlecore, serially unrelenting in its delivery
and twisting and turning at every step like the ground below it
is continuously giving way. Gear shifts down into epic metal-inspired
plateaus such as those featured towards the end of ‘Medusa’
and ‘The First Time’ deliver a real sense of mosh-inducing
energy and unification that ties the album together beautifully.
The overall ‘epicness’ of the sound comes as no surprise
considering that the meta-text of these songs concerns the hypothetical
rebirth of the robot out of the debris resulting from the cosmic
battle between the void and the behemoth. Although slightly more
accessible than previous recordings, to many uninitiated’s,
The Flying Luttenbachers sound will remain out of range as it
is just a bit too claustrophobic and intimidating to be able to
seep into the hipsters mindset. To the lucky few though, this
release will engage the mind and body in a state of complex disorientation
and bathe listening arena’s in a manic, out-of-scope cloak
of non-conformist combat-sonic’s. One sincerely hopes that
The Flying Luttenbacher’s story will live on. (KS)
p.s.
Try playing ‘Incarceration by Abstraction’ to the
amazing animated video’s featured on Lightning Bolt’s
‘Power of Salad…’ DVD in a darkened room for
an ultimate sonic/visual trip.
For
fans of: Playing Crom-Tech, Don Cab, Upsilon Acrux, Supersilent,
Crowpath, Teen Cthulhu and Nebelnest discs at the same time, backwards!
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