HurdAudio Rotation: The Necessary Impossibility of Determinism

Laurie Anderson: Life On A String. 2001. Nonesuch Records: 79539-2.

Laurie Anderson: vocals, keyboard, violins
Tom Nelis: vocals
John Kelly: background vocal
Joey Baron: percussion, drums
Chris Speed: saxophone
Cuong Vu: trumpet
Skuli Sverrisson: bass, little organ, percussion programming, high bass, sounds
David Torn: open loop
Greg Cohen: acoustic bass
Danny Frankel: percussion, hand claps, box-o-toys
Mino Cinelu: percussion
Eyvind Kang: violin
Erik Friedlander: cello
Mitchell Froom: keyboards, claviola, mellotron, wurlitzer
Liheng: baritone banhu
Peter Scherer: keyboard, percussion
Jamshied Sharifi: additional keyboards, strings
Hal Willner: turntables, samples
Van Dyke Parks: string arrangements, conductor, keyboards
Ann Leathers, Carol Webb, Jan Mullen, Jonathan Dinklage, Ricky Sortomme, Joel Pitchon, Ellen Payne, Barry Finclair, Enrico DiCecco, Heidi Modr, Jean Ingram: violin
Sue Pray, Karen Dreyfus, Vincent Lionti, Judith Wilmer: viola
Fredrick Zlotkin, Jeanne LeBlanc: cello
Timothy Cobb: bass
Jill Dell'Abate: orchestra contractor
Elena Barere: concert master
Dwight Mikkelsen: copyist
Bill Frisell: guiter
Ben Rubin: bells
Mocean Worker: beats, keyboard
Lou Reed: guitar
Martin Brumbach: percussion arrangement
Vinicius Cantuaria: percussion

This particular Laurie Anderson collection - a "concept album" in its own right - has long been an aural fascination for these ears. So much of the Laurie Anderson language is present; the odd pauses in mid sentence, the down turn at the end of phrases, the unpredictable turns within an altered song form, and the sense of poetry and story telling swimming within each song. It's an approach that has yielded mixed results over a long career. From frequently excellent to sometimes puzzling. With Life On A String, Laurie Anderson has tapped into a rich slice of New York musicians. Many of them are the best in their field (in my opinion). And it's amazing to hear how they sublimate their talent toward realizing such an unmistakeably Anderson-esque sound. Then there is an additional layer of production. A thick layer that somehow rarely obscures the rich qualities of these quirky pieces. This is a perfect example of how to be over-produced without sounding over-produced.

The Flying Luttenbachers: Destroy All Music: Revisited. 2007 re-mastering of the 1994 release. UG Explode/Skin Graft Records: GR85CD/UG06.

Weasel Walter: percussion
Chad Organ: saxophones
Ken Vandermark: reeds
Jeb Bishop: bass, trombone
Dylan Posa: electric guitar

It is fitting that I now find myself inhabiting the wasteland of Chicago that the Flying Luttenbachers left behind in their wake. Though it was probably a wasteland before the Flying Luttenbachers waged their sonic warfare upon a social order that continues to sleep walk to the status quo. The sonic energies that Weasel Walter and his collaborators tapped into continues to reverberate through the late night venues of this town.

Destroy All Music was intended as a statement of my own frustration and alienation. I was angry about society, the sad state of culture, the emptimess of my wallet and the general ignorance and hypocrisy of the status quo. Not much has changed for the better! The syntax of this music is one of unmitigated dissonance and dischord. Padadoxically, balancing this ugliness has always been a furiously positive outpouring of energy that screams 'nothing can stop MY MUSIC!' In spite of the nihilist trappings, there's an underlying hope that destroying everything can somehow create a clean slate for the future to build upon. I still believe in this concept, but I'm waiting for it to happen beyond the scope of music...

- Weasel Walter, from the liner notes.

The Flying Luttenbachers specialized in revealing the significant overlap between brutality and honesty. The undeniable pull and cathartic necessity of unmitigated dissonance and dischord. Along the way this documentation of the band's activities around Chicago in 1993 and 1994 coalesced into Destroy All Music as evidence of a plateau realized within a collision of punk, jazz and noise experiments. A blistering instability captured on recording and available to inoculate one's ears and mind from the dishonest politeness of mainstream culture.

X.o.4: Cataracts. 2006. Ecstatic Peace!: E#105d - limited edition LP.

Bill Nace: guitar, sound artist
John Truscinski: drums, sound artist
Jake Meginsky: percussion, sound artist

X.0.4 is a star located approximately 956 light years from Earth in the Lynx constellation and is generally only visible through a telescope. Not unlike the sonic universe inhabited by the trio of the same name. Sound folds in upon itself into a space of quiet amplification. Progression consisting only of a natural sequence of events captured through amplification. It is a tenuous, suspended state built up from carefully controlled feedback, slight excitations of guitar strings pulled into the foreground of a drone texture and the undulating shifts of a harmonic/enharmonic terrain. Music that pulls the ears toward the interior of the sounding bodies and electrical signals of guitar and amplifier to reveal a space previously unrealized. Beautiful and aloof.

HurdAudio Rotation: Supporting and Destroying Tradition

The Flying Luttenbachers: ...The Truth is a Fucking Lie... 1999. UgExplode Records: GR61cd/ug10.

Weasel Walter: drums, trumpets, electronics, mellotron
Kurt Johnson: bass guitar
Fred Lonberg-Holm: cello
Chuck Falzone: electric guitar, abyssic guitar
William Pisarri: bass guitar, shriek, clarinet
Michael Colligan: reeds
Dylan Posa: conductor, casio
Julie Pomerleau: violin

The world may not have been - nor be - ready for The Flying Luttenbachers. But it does need them. Music bound up within a tight knot of contradictions. There is something deeply cleansing about their dirty, gritty sound. Along with an uncompromising honesty to see the "truth" as a lie. Improvising musicians from the Chicago scene late in the twentieth century guided by Weasel Walter's insatiable drive to realize a brutal prog sound. The open embrace of noise and a willingness to play with it with unbridled aggression has produced a record that has aged well.

Ellery Eskelin: Forms. 2004. Hat Hut Records: hatOLOGY 592.

Ellery Eskelin: tenor saxophone
Drew Gress: double bass
Phil Haynes: drums

Even the most talented free players are not immune to the charges of being somehow unable to play "straight" or inside the tradition. Often leveled by people who don't realize that playing "free" can be far more challenging. With Forms, Ellery Eskelin put together a nice F.U. to that kind of criticism. With tracks titled after the styles Eskelin employs; "Blues," "Ballad," "Latin," "Bebop" and so on, Eskelin shows off not only his ability to play "inside," but his compositional ability as well. Teamed up with a rhythm section of heavy hitters in Gress and Haynes, this music doesn't feel constrained at all by the tradition. Far from it. It turns out to be a good record full of inventive twists from one of the most relentlessly creative figures on the scene.

Dave Douglas: Sanctuary. 1997. Avant: 066.

Dave Doulgas: trumpet
Cuong Vu: trumpet
Yuka Honda: sampler
Anthony Coleman: sampler
Hilliard Green: bass
Mark Dresser: bass
Chris Speed: saxophone
Dougie Bowne: drums

Still a staple in the HurdAudio sonic ideal. The musicians on this recording have such strong personalities and the playing is so free that this becomes a double-disc game of picking out who is adding what to the overall sound at any given moment. This one hits a rare balance between structure and un-structure that soars in the hands and ears of these players. The presence of two samplers adding a constant destabilizing foil to the sound with the appearance and disappearance of sampled grooves combined with Dougie Bowne's excellent drumming. One can hear faint hints of the kind of electronic sound Dave Douglas would later be mining in the decade that followed.

HurdAudio Rotation: Ugly Noises and Reimaginings

Joshua Jefferson: Jefferson Solo. 2007. Limited edition CD-R.

Joshua Jefferson: alto saxophone

Ten short improvisations that place the ear at point blank range. Immersed within the plumbing and mechanical workings of the instrument. Ever mindful of the organism of lungs, breath and spit that make it work. These are ugly noises and they are honest noises. Strong noises emitted from frail, human artifacts.

Vijay Iyer: Reimagining 2005. Savoy Jazz: SVY 17475.

Vijay Iyer: piano
Rudresh Mahanthappa: alto saxophone
Stephan Crump: bass
Marcus Gilmore: drums

A quartet that bursts through the speakers with a mixture of rhythmic intensity and joy on "Revolutions" for the opening track before winding down the sonic journey with a solo piano "re-imagining" of John Lennon's "Imagine." Somewhere in the middle the intensity slows - mostly out of necessity given the big bang that starts the set - that never settles into a low moment. This is a tight ensemble and Iyer has plenty to say musically. For all the extremes of musicianship oozing from every nuanced second of this music there is a lot of heart in this music as well. An outstanding record.

The Flying Luttenbachers: 'Incarceration By Abstraction'. 2007. ugEXPLODE Records: UG23.

Weasel Walter: guitars, basses, mellotron, organ, clarinet, electronics, drums
guests Jonathan Joe, Aurora Josephson: vocals on one track

Weasel Walter paints in slabs of multi tracked aggression. Trafficking in ugly sounds as a more honest means of telling an imagined post apocalyptic story. Balancing the forces of relentless intensity against a loosely conceptual album. All of which works under the Flying Luttenbachers rubric, even if this proved to be the final gesture before disbanding the now one-person band. One can hear the manic insanity and attention to detail at work behind the multiple layers of guitars and drums. The striking quality of this work is a whole is the ability to create contrasts without softening the onslaught of tension and dissonance. At times sounding like a rock opera that has dropped all pretense of accessibility.

HurdAudio Rotation: Standards and Lies

Anthony Braxton: Piano Quartet, Yoshi's 1994 [disc 1]. 1996. Music & Arts: CD 849.

Anthony Braxton: piano
Marty Ehrlich: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet
Joe Fonda: bass
Arthur Fuller: percussion

As an interpretation of jazz standards this one is a train wreck. I keep coming back to these sessions - and there is plenty to gleam from the experience - but I have to admit to finding Braxton's pianism troubling. Marty Ehrlich's playing is outstanding. One can imagine the mix of curiosity, joy and confusion present at Yoshi's as these familiar Coltrane and Gillespie tunes get churned through the brittle and plodding churn of this quartet. The old standards are open to all different kinds of interpretations, and they are an unmistakable launching point for these ruminations. There's an irreconcilable disappointment that the twin forces of tradition and free improvisation was delivered with such a heavy pair of hands on the ivories.

The Flying Luttenbachers: ...the Truth is a Fucking Lie... 1999. ugEXPLODE Records: GR61cd/ug10.

Weasel Walter: drums, trumpets, electronics, mellotron
Kurt Johnson: bass guitar
Fred Lonberg-Holm: cello
Chuck Falzone: electric guitar
William Pisarri: bass guitar, shriek
Michael Colligan: reeds, etc.
Dylan Posa: conductor, casio
Julie Pomerleau: violin

There is a clenched fist quality to this music that steers this sound - and by proxy the ears tuned to it - away from even the slightest shade of the sentimental. Sounds driven by sheer necessity and brutal allegiance to sonic textures fueled by rage and unflinching layers of dissonance. Propelled by the raw kinetic drive of drummer Weasel Walter as he draws upon the considerable forces of Chicago free jazz and hard-core musicians this is an expression that is both ugly and necessary.

Ellery Eskelin: Forms. 2004. Hat Hut: hatOLOGY 592.

Ellery Eskelin: tenor saxophone
Drew Gress: double bass
Phil Haynes: drums

This one is more of an oblique approach to the idea and ideal of jazz tradition and its "standards." Other than an interpretation of Duke Ellington's "Fleurette Africaine" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop" these are Ellery Eskelin originals cast within a standard tenor saxophone trio instrumentation and titled after deep stylistic nodes of the tradition: "Blues," "In Three," "Ballad," "Latin" and "Vignettes." The sound that comes out of this trio isn't overly steeped in tradition and the overall sonic voice retains much of the fresh qualities and individuality of these three improvisers (along with the high degree of musicianship each brings to this session).