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)

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GROB547 Die Instabilität der Symmetrie