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The Flying Luttenbachers

Between 1991 and 2007 this notorious instrumental unit wasted puny earthlings with an amorphous fusion of all things extreme and dissonant in music: hardcore-punk rawness, death-metal speed/technicality, free-jazz asymmetry, no-wave skronk, progressive-rock conceptual bombast, electronic-noise and modern-classical abstraction. Over the course of 16 full-length albums the group included jazz luminaries such as Hal Russell, Ken Vandermark, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Jeb Bishop as well as underground rock virtuosos like guitarists Mick Barr and Ed Rodriguez. The band's connection to the jazz idiom comes primarily from a thread of high energy freedom that was most apparent on punk-jazz albums such as 1995's "Destroy All Music" and the obliteratingly brutal double LP "Trauma" released in 2001. After "Trauma" the focus shifted to extremely complex rock composition while still incorporating dangerous improvisational edges.

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163
Album Review

The Flying Luttenbachers: Trauma

Read "Trauma" reviewed by Clifford Allen


Trauma originally came out in 2001 as a double LP set on drummer Weasel Walter's ugExplode label. Named as an obscure homage to a founding member, multi-instrumentalist Hal Russell, the Flying Luttenbachers recorded sixteen albums in as many years of existence (ceasing in 2007). Though initiated by Walter and Russell, the group was always Walter's 'baby/chief mode of expression' through various aggregations, from improvisation to free-metal to Contortions-esque jounce. Trauma comes from a short-lived trio with reedman Michael Colligan and ...

364
Album Review

The Flying Luttenbachers: Destroy All Music Revisited

Read "Destroy All Music Revisited" reviewed by Henry Smith


Still as uncompromising as it was at its release almost ten years ago, The Flying Luttenbachers Destroy All Music Revisited is an amalgamation of so many disparate styles of music that it continues to remain virtually unclassifiable. Formed by percussionist and Hal Russell protégé Weasel Walter in 1994, the group went through numerous personnel changes before arriving at the one that would record this, the group's best conceived and must successful effort.

The album features a line-up that ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Trauma

ugEXPLODE
2008

buy

Destroy All Music...

Skin Graft Records
2007

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Videos

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