
Weasel Walter/ Kevin Drumm/ Fred Lonberg-Holm - Eruption (10.2003)
Three years ago we released the Weasel Walter’s recording Tribute
to Masayuki Takayanagi (GROB 208). In addition to Walter (drums, guitar,
mix, artwork) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), Jim O’Rourke (guitar)
also participated in the sessions. This secured the recording a certain
popularity and provoked furious reactions. Since Tribute to Masayuki Takayanagi
certainly does not stand for the finely engraved music that has made O’Rourke
popular worldwide. The recording was free improvised Death Metal, a committed
transformation of the early noise music of Takayanagi (this first Japanese
noise guitarist had his important phase in the 70’s) into the present.
More than a few critics saw this as disrespectful towards Takayanagi.
Weasel Walter, earlier in Chicago, now in California, is, however, a master
of, if you will, meta-disrespectfullness. What would happen if the energy
and impact of Takayanagi could only be mediated today by overdoing it?
Honoring a great role model means kicking him in the shins.
The (journalistic) rejection could really only lead to making a further
Tribute to Masayuki Takayanagi album and to work out even more concretely
the presumed disrespectfullness. The first album was indeed one session,
the trio Walter/Lonberg-Holm/O’Rourke existed only as long as the
recording; the second album was supposed to be a worked-out studio production.
Walter grabbed Lonberg-Holm and his ideal guitarist Kevin Drumm, brought
them in a Chicago recording studio in the Summer of 2002 – and went
a step further: he broke free of the Takayanagi paradigm and played an
improvised music that synthesized his free jazz socialization with the
no-wave grind core of this band The Flying Luttenbachers (which happens
here, perhaps, for the first time).
Eruption pushes the process of reflection – reflections upon improvised
music, the contemporary character of Free Jazz, the energy of Speed Metal,
and of course the reflections upon Takayanagi – even further towards
independence. One hour of music, 40 tracks (the liner notes, an attack
upon a saturated and self-righteous Free Jazz scene, are in code in the
track titles). Excessive concentration, the most concentrated excesses.
Walter Weasel (still: drums, power-electronics, mix, cover art) is at
the height of his abilities. He is brilliantly supported/supplemented/spurred
on once again by Fred Lonberg-Holm, the most versatile cellist of the
improvisation scene, and Kevin Drumm, one of the avant-garde heroes of
the last seven, eight years, who here is able to express his Death Metal
obsessions.
Kevin Drumm
Fred Lonberg-Holm
(also on
GROB208)
Weasel Walter
(also on
GROB208)
back to GROB catalog
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