An artifact of neglected genius: that’s what we have here. After grinding The Flying Luttenbachers stone for 15 years, Weasel Walter has finally come to the conclusion that the band, concept, and their thoroughly impressive opus will never garner the attention or respect that they duly deserve. He was forever moving upwards and onwards to the ends of staying an outsider to any musical clique that might be burgeoning with popularity, yet was consistently praised by the audience he did have as an innovator and inspiration -- too completely absorbed in his vision to worry about his perception by his audience, peers, or even his collaborators. If you don’t dig it, hell, he’ll push forward without you. Another casualty of the oft-cited phenomenon of being too far ahead of one’s time.
I can only surmise that the rising tide of the internet’s proliferation of ever more and weirder music that has lifted so many boats, but failed to buoy that of the Luttenbachers, drove the final nail in their coffin. And what a shame, since those who are flooding in are surely aware of the cultural trope of the misunderstood genius. Truisms are truisms for a reason, and one is that some art is just too hard to swallow without the benefit of the mastication of several generations, even for the purportedly open-minded and adventurous.
What hath this neglect wrought? How about Weasel’s most succinct and accomplished compositions forced into the most awkward of arrangements? Having, to some extent, economically abandoned the project (probably out of deference to those that have performed and labored nigh-gratis previously on his recordings), Weasel’s only recourse for getting the music in the can was to revisit the arduous path taken on Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder and perform the entire work himself. Bear in mind that this is still a rock album, no matter how divergent from the mainstream predilection it may be. And rock music, even as cerebral as TFL's, thrives on syn-/en-ergy, and a massively overtracked recording is where both go to die. To wit, Weasel labels these “definitive solo versions of each piece… for the sake of documentation.” Not exactly the verbiage of transcendent rock power.
While not benefiting from any of the aural or psychic bleed of a live recording, Incarceration by Abstraction is entirely adequate. I first fell in love with The Luttenbachers to the sonically equivalent Systems, so to properly receptive ears, none of the brilliance should be lost. TFL has long been (since Infection and Decline, at least) an exercise in pitting the systematic and mechanical against the metaphysical and beautiful against the absurd and irreverent, but previous works have given precedent to each of these aspects in their own turn, whereas here, each is given equal treatment. In that respect, this certainly has the feel of an ambiguous end to a cycle, which is put to words in the first libretto of the cycle.
With any luck, it was the tidiness of this being a summary work that led to the cessation of TFL’s operations, and Weasel will revive the project. But rest assured, he trudges forward, constantly nudged from his beeline path, but never relenting, always paying lip service to having learned his lesson. Maybe this time he has, and he’ll focus on that for which there’s a receptive audience. But something tells me he is, at his core, a slave to his vision and might just be content to strive for greatness at the expense of happiness.
RIP The Flying Luttenbachers.
1. Assault On Apathy
2. Electrocution
3. Medusa
4. Violent Shade
5. Triplex (For Ed Rodriguez And Mick Barr)
6. Crypt Emission
7. The Serialization Of Cruelty
8. The First Time
