The Flying Luttenbachers


The Flying Luttenbachers are an American instrumental unit led by multi-instrumentalist / composer / producer Weasel Walter. The Luttenbachers have created a body of work focused on musical extremity and dissonance. Over the course of the band, the personnel has shifted numerous times around the artistic leadership of Walter. The music has run a gamut from intense, all-acoustic free improvisation, to complex, modernistic rock composition; electronic noise to punk-inspired jazz. Walter has been quoted as drawing inspiration from the fields of punk, death metal, free jazz, and no wave.

History

The Flying Luttenbachers formed in December 1991 in Chicago, Illinois as a punk jazz trio, with Hal Russell, Chad Organ and Weasel Walter. The band derived their moniker from Russell's birthname, Harold Luttenbacher. Russell left the band in June 1992, and was soon replaced by Ken Vandermark for the recording of the Flying Luttenbachers' first 7" record.
The band has since featured a frequently shifting cast of free jazz and experimental rock musicians, including Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kurt Johnson, Jeb Bishop, Alex Perkolup, Mick Barr, Ed Rodriguez, Mike Green and Jonathan Hischke. The Flying Luttenbachers have toured Europe and the US extensively with bands like The Locust, Arab On Radar, Lightning Bolt, U.S. Maple, Erase Errata, Bobby Conn, and Wolf Eyes. Walter moved from Chicago to Oakland, California in 2003, beginning yet another incarnation of the group. The live band played their final concert in November 2006. The Flying Luttenbachers project officially ceased operation in November 2007 upon the release of a final studio album.
In 2017 the band reformed for a tour in France invited by the Sonic Protest festival. The newest incarnation of the group appeared opening 3 shows for Oh Sees at Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY on October 17-19.

Conceptual continuity

Since 1996’s Revenge album, the Flying Luttenbachers’ musical output has been underlined by a gradually unravelling storyline concerning the self-obliteration of the planet Earth and the resulting aftermath. The 2006 album Cataclysm concerns an interstellar battle between two monolithic entities: The Void and The Iridescent Behemoth. The music energetically utilizes deliberate harmonic dissonance and the material operates on a principle of intelligent transformation of concise amounts of interrelated themes.

Discography

Singles