Entries associated with the tag "Weasel Walter":

I've never seen the confrontational, shticky New York jazz quartet Mostly Other People Do the Killing--whenever they've played in Chicago I've either been out town or, uh, couldn't find my car keys. But after their most recent gig here, back in February at the Hungry Brain, I heard an astonishing amount of acrimony in the responses of certain local musicians who'd been at the show (I'd rather not name names, though).

MOPDTK is led by bassist Moppa Elliott and plays its original songs--which are explicitly modeled after classic tunes, forms, and trends of modern jazz, mainly from the 50s and 60s--with a great deal of irreverence and tongue-in-cheek humor. Performances veer off in all kinds of directions, either breaking down into pure chaos or shifting into schlock like prefab disco, and then snap back into form. I happen to love MOPDTK's records, including the brand-new This Is Our Moosic (Hot Cup), but from what I've heard, the band's characteristic diversions are more extreme and absurd onstage, even to the point of self-indulgence.

The cover of This Is Our Moosic tweaks the cover of the classic Ornette Coleman album of (almost) the same name, and in one of MOPDTK's stubborn gimmicks every tune includes the name of an actual town in Pennsylvania (hence "Moosic"). In his liner notes Elliott explains that the group is inspired not only by Coleman, but by the AACM, the ICP Orchestra, and the Clusone 3--all groups that made a virtue out of nonlinearity. While Elliott's band is way more obvious and deliberately stoopid in its humor and has in no way matched the artistry and originality of its influences, his point stands. On its albums at least, the quartet's adoration for those styles remains clear no matter how thick the silliness and mockery get--the band seems keen on pushing jazz cliches to the breaking point.

MOPDTK trumpeter Peter Evans lends his talents to the band's yukfest with outsize gusto, but in other settings he's one of the most serious, focused, and impressive contemporary musicians I've heard--some of the same locals who've reacted to MOPDTK with disgust are awed by Evans's solo work. He has apparently limitless chops and flexibility, plus a profound grasp of not only jazz tradition but also classical and experimental music--and he's only 26! I can't think of another trumpeter of his generation that can match his talent and potential.

I was recently knocked out by some all-improvised sessions Evans recorded with drummer and former Chicagoan Weasel Walter, Bay Area bassist Damon Smith, and reedist and Anthony Braxton alum James Fei--the group has released a CD under its members' names and a limited-edition LP called Oculus Ex Abyssus, with Paul Hartsaw replacing Fei (both are on Walter's label, UgExplode). Evans uses his horn like a paintbrush, and by that I mean he can create broad strokes, splatters, or precise pointillistic prickles. He's an excellent improviser--fleet, responsive, attentive, and bold.

More germane to today's post is [Sparks] (Creative Sources), his recent duet with bassist Tom Blancarte (who also plays on Evans's terrific quartet album for the Firehouse 12 label). The improvised music here, with Evans exclusively on piccolo trumpet, is aggressively abrasive and discordant, delivered with unrelenting intensity--Evans never seems to feel the muscle fatigue that eventually affects most trumpeters' embouchures. One criticism of Evans that I think actually sticks is that he tends to cram a surfeit of ideas and tricks into every bit of music he plays, and he's certainly guilty of that here; in fact, it's sorta difficult to make it through the whole hour of [Sparks] in just one setting. But to me, that's not necessarily a bad thing--there's nothing wrong with a recording that demands time and concentration from the listener.

Evans performs tomorrow night at 7:30 PM at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in a concert presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble. He'll improvise with two ICE members, Dave Remnick on reeds and Nathan Davis on live electronics. There's a $10 suggested donation for those able to pay.

Today's playlist:

Jacob Anderskov & Airto Moreira, Ears to the Ground (ILK)
Murs, Murs for President (Warner Brothers)
James Carter, Present Tense (Emarcy)
Mary Halvorson, Jessica Pavone, Devin Hoff & Ches Smith, Calling All Portraits (Skycap)
Anthony Braxton, Quartet (Moscow) 2008 (Leo)

There’s usually no deader week on the local concert calendar than this one, but for fans of improvised music there are a couple of Christmas presents: On Wednesday reedist Ken Vandermark and drummer Tim Daisy meet up at the Hideout for an evening of spontaneous music-making that will surely be akin to the fine 2006 Empty Bottle gig captured on August Music (a limited CD-R release). The two work together in several contexts these days—from the Vandermark 5 to the Frame Quartet to Bridge 61—so they have a strong, natural rapport, whether they're shaping high-octane, heavily rhythmic blasts or focusing on slow-moving textural excursions.

Then on Friday former scene mainstay/gadfly Weasel Walter will play duets with trombonist Jeb Bishop at Heaven. Back in the 90s they worked together in an early line-up of Weasel's Flying Luttenbachers, the long-running, frequently morphing project that he just recently disbanded. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003 Weasel has maintained a hectic pace, playing with the Luttenbachers, XBXRX, and Burmese, among other groups, but the biggest shift has been his return to free jazz and improvised music, which will be the context for this gig. He’s just released three new albums on his own ugExplode label, including what may be the final Luttenbachers opus, Incarceration by Abstraction, on which he played everything himself. More germane to this gig is the scorching Firestorm, recorded live in New York and Philadelphia this past February. Some heavy hitters join the fray—including veteran Sun Ra reedist Marshall Allen, bassist Lisle Ellis, drummer Marc Edwards, and saxophonist Marco Eneidi—but ultimately this album is about the massed sound the whole group delivers, a roaring maelstrom of pure energy music. Lichens, a trio date with bassist and frequent collaborator Damon Smith and Italian reedist Gianni Gebbia, is more restrained and, dare I say it, reminiscent of the jazz tradition—swinging rhythms, walking bass lines, and postbop horn licks. It’s nice to get the chance to hear Weasel play in such a spacious, limber context.

Today’s playlist:

Paul Motian Trio 2000 + 2, Live at the Village Vanguard (Winter & Winter)
Ravish Momin’s Trio Tarana, Miren (A Longing) (Clean Feed)
Oren Ambarchi, In the Pendulum’s Embrace (Southern Lord)
Maria Rita, Samba Meu (Warner Music Latina)
Orion Rigel Dommisse, What I Want From You is Sweet (Language of Stone)

Former Chicagoan Weasel Walter hasn’t exactly mellowed out since he moved to Oakland a few years ago, but the notorious provocateur has loosened up. Perhaps it was the change of scenery or good old-fashioned age, but the Weez has become less doctrinaire and rigid than he was during his Chicago days, whether that means retiring his horned buzz cut and war paint or returning to the high velocity free jazz he started out playing in the earliest days of his long-lived Flying Luttenbachers, when folks like Hal Russell, Ken Vandermark, and Jeb Bishop were members.

He recently released a new CD by the Weasel Walter Quartet called Revolt Music on his Ug/Explode label and it's unabashedly free jazz, albeit hyper-charged and relentless. (Some things don’t change.) Walter kind of sounds like a Sunny Murray lp played at 45 RPM, all stuttering kick drum and careening cymbal splash, occasionally so free of space it sounds like a drone. A number of saxophonists appear on the album’s eight tracks--including former Chicagoan Aram Shelton--while bassists Damon Smith and Randy Hunt fill out the group, laying down plucked and bowed lines that writhe within the maelstrom, flailing like downed power cables. Famed guitar master Henry Kaiser makes a cameo on one track with a ferociously corrosive solo. There's interplay going on, but at such high speeds it’s often hard to make it out.

Walter is still playing “brutal prog” with the current incarnation of the Luttenbachers. The recent Cataclysm added Orthrelm’s Mick Barr to the line-up and included, among other stuff, a version of Messiaen’s “L’Ascension." But on his current US tour--which, oddly, skips Chicago--he’s playing free jazz in numerous incarnations. For years Walter complained about being ostracized by the Chicago free jazz community, but he’s certainly managed to find heavy-duty companions recently. Among the people he’s playing with on the tour is former Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen, Kaiser, ROVA saxophonist Jon Raskin, and bassist Lisle Ellis. Could a Chicago reconciliation/love fest be far off?

Jessica Hopper wrote about Lake of Dracula a few weeks ago in the print version of the Reader, but I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that the band's less-than-two-year existence ended nearly a decade ago. The recently released Skeletal Remains (Savage Land) suggests that the band’s music hasn’t aged at all. Sort of a supergroup of the city’s so-called “now wave scene,” the band was fronted by soon-to-be-techno star Marlon Magas, with Weasel Walter of the Flying Luttenbachers on guitar and Heather Melowic of the Scissor Girls on drums. The bulk of the material on the new album comes from a live radio broadcast made in May of 1997 for KFJC in Los Altos, California, recorded about a month before the band threw in the towel. At that point the lineup had expanded to include bassist Jessica Ruffins (ex-Jaks and co-owner of Key Club Recording in Benton Harbor), who joined after Lake of Dracula's sole studio effort—an eponymous album on Skin Graft—was recorded in the fall of 1996.    

While the primal, noisy throb on Skeletal Remains certainly connects the band to New York’s late-70s no-wave movement—a key point of reference for this potent little chapter of Chicago rock history—there was nothing retro or imitative about Lake of Dracula's music. Magas, a genuine maniac whose early output on the Bulb label helped pave the way for the Ann Arbor noise underground, balanced confrontational zeal with an innate rock sensibility, and arrhythmic whooping with propulsive hectoring, as Walter found a remarkable rainbow of tones within the gray of his brittle, metallic guitar shards. Melowic’s pummeling tom-toms gave the music its primordial thud, a kind of simplistic inducement to orgiastic mayhem. But despite the surface chaos, the music is meticulously put together. The CD also includes some hard-to-find compilation tracks and a single released by Kill Rock Stars.