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Thread: The Flying Luttenbachers Return

  1. #1
    Member Morpheus's Avatar
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    The Flying Luttenbachers Return

    I know this is of interest to very few people here, but Weasel Walter is bringing the project back, for one show in France at least for now, a new power trio lineup doing interpretations of old material.

    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.p...bstory_index=0

    Hopefully this will lead to more, I was a fan of the band(s) in general but I felt WW ended it on a particular high note with the "brutal prog" period of the final 5 albums.

  2. #2
    Fantastic news.

  3. #3
    They are playing during the Sonic Protest Festival in Paris. on wednesday 22 of march. Great Avant festival, nice locations , good prices , good athmosphere, among my highlights : The Flying Luttenbachers , Phew and This Is Not This Heat

    http://www.sonicprotest.com/
    Dieter Moebius : "Art people like things they don’t understand!"

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    Member Mascodagama's Avatar
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    Fantastic news. If this lead to new material I'd be delighted. I am with Morpheus on those last five albums, unimpeachable stuff and quite unique.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Morpheus View Post
    I know this is of interest to very few people here
    Personally I just can absolutely not for the very sake of my friggin' life understand how TFL wouldn't possibly already have been inducted into the R&RHoF.

    Agree about that last handful of albums of theirs, though - some of those pieces went so far above the head of literally everything else I've heard by any "rock" group in terms of pure radicalism in form and textural expression. Walter's stated motive with TFL was always to create "surreally extreme music", and by the time of Incarceration by Abstraction I find that he came quite close to perfecting a result. I've played that record to a couple of self-appointed "extreme metal specialists", and there was no way whatsoever that any of them would ever want to hear any of it again.

    TFL's music not only breaks all the rules, it blows them into oblivion.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

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    Quote Originally Posted by Scrotum Scissor View Post
    TFL's music not only breaks all the rules, it blows them into oblivion.
    From the little I've heard of them, I don't agree. Sure, their music breaks the "little rules", the ones that the more stodgy fans and critics have evolved to let them declare how this kind of music must sound like this and not like that. But there are big rules as well, rules of proportion and balance, of tension-and-release cycles, and it doesn't break those at all, any more than any great left-field music does. That last track on Incarceration by Abstraction, for example, sounds unlike any extreme metal or almost any prog. But it does sound rather like Cardiacs - another outside-the-box band whose music breaks all the stylistic rules but not the musical ones. In contrast, there's music out there - Zs or some of Scott Walker, for example - that pushes awfully hard at the idea of "musicality" and at the definition of music itself.

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    Member Morpheus's Avatar
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    The last track on Incarceration is intentionally unlike anything not just on the album in question but across the entire output of TFL. A bit of a joke making the final song on the as yet final album not just the only thing approaching pop they ever did but the only song with vocals.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Baribrotzer View Post
    From the little I've heard of them, I don't agree. [...] In contrast, there's music out there - Zs or some of Scott Walker, for example - that pushes awfully hard at the idea of "musicality" and at the definition of music itself.
    John, I agree about the transcendence of Walker and (especially) Zs, but then again they're not the first nor the only ones to push the idea "awfully hard". Let me clearify by specifying what I meant as far as TFL go.

    Walter is the ultimate electric/current/post-"rock" anarchic artist in that he displays a mentality of creative ethics which completely and utterly defies even the basics of "genre" as a notion of formal understanding. His early works with TFL very much reflected the allusions to Hal Russell (with whom he'd cooperated and whose actual surname made the fundament for Walter's band), although he shunned both the "free jazz" and "noise" tags simply by arguing that he didn't know such musics and consequently couldn't be expected to "make" them. Still, folks like Ken Vandermark and Jeb Bishop would be popping up on various releases of his.

    On the surface, Walter's dismay at pigeonholing likens to that of John Zorn, whose music and apparent theories/philosophies Walter has repeatedly denounced - arguably or possibly because he's disappointed at the produced outcome of Zorn's. But to venture from vintage TFL's free sonic chaotic audio visions to all-electric through-composed mayhem (as interpreted in titles such as Systems Emerge from Complete Disorder) presents this anarchic view not only as one of music, but of arts in general and probably also the world and life as such. "Rules" as a very concept are disposed into oblivion simply because you forget their apparent function when listening. THIS is what I meant.

    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

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    Have you ever met Weasel Walter?

    I have, a couple of times. He's a real character, and not only does he know it, but I think it's quite studied and intentional - and a big part of his version of self-promotion. Just for an example, he wears odd and conspicuous clothes. His real first name is not generally known, and as far as the public is concerned, he is only referred to by his nickname - because there might be a dozen Joe Walters, or fifteen Charlie Walters, but there's only one Weasel Walter. I also got the definite impression that he's a bit of a prankster. And that his concept of "art" doesn't stop at the music, but includes its presentation, its stylistic positioning, its apparent intentions, and his own persona as well. And that perhaps, what he says might be sometimes said more to stir things up and confound peoples' assumptions - and thus make him noticeable, for additional self-promotion - than to be taken seriously.

    All of which would be supremely annoying if he couldn't deliver musically, but he absolutely can.

  10. #10
    ^ I "met" him as in throwing him a phrase of "good gig, man" on his ascending from stage.

    Don't know if the guy even heard it, though. But I absolutely concur with your overall judgement here. He's a deliberately faux or mock-postmodernist, and as such more or less a "punk rebel" at heart; his work receives as almost irritatingly provocative, yet he makes spoof of highbrow intellectualism while still displaying a complete awareness and control of such cultural assets. Of course, this "doubly contrarian" approach and attitude does in fact not break any rules in itself - but, if anything, it presents the notion of rule-breaking in a rather productive guise.

    I think it's pretty much perfectly captured here:


    One would perhaps immediately fall to the conclusion that TFL's appearance on a kids' show makes for a damn surreal event in itself, but then again I detect a message saying "no, it's not that big a mystery, really" - about their whole idea of things. Which, obviously, again has the art-school "punk" infection written all over it.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

  11. #11
    Member chalkpie's Avatar
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    This music is genius. Whether we "Get" it or not is not the fault of the music. Same with thing with Schoenberg and Webern. That music is some of the greatest ever written but largely ignored by the masses, not only here but in the concert halls too. I don't pretend to know all of the FL music, but what I've heard is top shelf.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by chalkpie View Post
    This music is genius. Whether we "Get" it or not is not the fault of the music. Same with thing with Schoenberg and Webern. That music is some of the greatest ever written.
    I agree, but then again I'm never really sure if Walter's intention or incentive or hope is for anyone to "get" it; somehow I think it's more of an artistic Zen thing - the sound is essentially imposed more than actually presented as such, and you're supposed to "hear" it more than merely listen.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

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    Thing is, at least with the Incarceration by Abstraction material, there is a sense of melody (dissonant melody to be sure, but melody nonetheless) and harmonic movement. It isn't easy music, but it's musical. If you listen, you can get it. Although it definitely helps to have experience listening to other "difficult" music, and requires repeat listenings. All of which says that for WW's music to satisfy WW himself - because I don't think he's doing it for any real or imagined audience - it has to have those qualities, it has to sound conventionally musical in a remote but real sense.

    On the other hand, I've heard some extreme metal that I consider unmusical. The kind that's all rumbling, impossibly cluttered sub-bass - with the guitar tuned down so far the strings flap, all the midrange rolled off the amps, the drums reduced to a steady hammering double-kick roll with snare cracks and a wash of cymbal, and the vocals a yammering croak unintelligible in any language. It's either very fast or very slow, and I can't even distinguish what notes they're playing. All of which is entirely the point - it's about sheer sonic impact, about expressing boiling adolescent rage, and about destroying the whole idea of musicality. Of course it sounds bad. It's supposed to. It's a punch at the whole world.

  14. #14
    Member nosebone's Avatar
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    Good sleepytime music!
    no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by nosebone View Post
    Good sleepytime music!
    Or like two Sleepytime LPs being played at once, at 78 rpm.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by nosebone View Post
    Good sleepytime music!
    Yes, TFL go well with Zopiclone.

    The "brutal prog" tag fits them spot on, although they are as different from Orthrelm as these are from Upsilon Acrux and the latter are from Cheer-Accident (for whom Walter initially invented the "brutal prog" term). But these - and other "brutals" such as Hella, Trephine, El Sledge, Stinking Lizaveta, Many Arms, Vacuum Tree Head, Dysrhythmia Lightning Bolt, Time of Orchids, Stats and Touchdown (or SGM for that matter) - share some common denominators of expression; the focus on density of dissonance serving a function of structural release, for instance. I find something to like in all of them, but some more than others. And they are not for everyone, that figures.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

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