Weasel Walter
Weasel Walter is an American composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and founder of ugEXPLODE Records. Walter's work has been informed by techniques and traditions of music including Avant-garde, experimental, no wave, free jazz, extreme metal, punk jazz, hardcore punk, noise, new music and
free improvisation. He coined the term "brutal prog" to describe the aggressively dissonant strain of prog played by groups like his band the Flying Luttenbachers.
Known as an unrelenting and abrasive provocateur whose performances trend toward overblown antics and "nihilistic glee", Walter has been described by guitarist Mary Halvorson as "completely manic and extraordinarily sensitive" and by The Chicago Reader as "a splinter lodged beneath the fingernail". Avant-garde artist Glenn Branca once called him "one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived".
He has performed as leader and sideperson in a number of bands, including Cellular Chaos and Lydia Lunch Retrovirus. Walter has worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Marshall Allen, John Butcher, Tim Dahl, Peter Evans, Mary Halvorson, Henry Kaiser, Jim O'Rourke, Evan Parker, Elliott Sharp, Ken Vandermark, and William Winant, as well as in bands including XBXRX, Bobby Conn, Cock E.S.P., Curse of the Birthmark, Erase Errata, Harry Pussy, Lair of the Minotaur, The Chicago Sound and others. He has produced albums by AIDS Wolf, Arab on Radar, Glenn Branca, Burmese, Lydia Lunch, Coachwhips, and Total Shutdown.
Career
In 1990, Walter moved to Chicago to work with free jazz composer Hal Russell at Columbia College. The following year, Russell joined Walter in co-founding the band the Flying Luttenbachers; saxophonist Chad Organ played in the early trio lineup. Russell left the band in the summer of 1992, and shortly after Ken Vandermark took his place for the recording of the band's first 7".Walter was highly involved in cultivating what he deemed the "Chicago No Wave" scene, meeting new musicians and collaborators through the Luttenbachers' art rock-continuum gigs and the experimental improvised music series he ran at Myopic Books. He graduated from Columbia College in 1995, with a final project, "Un-nerve", performed by a nonet including Ken Vandermark, Gene Coleman, Jim Baker, Kevin Drumm, Jeb Bishop, and Gustavo Leone.
A prolific performing and recording artist, Walter was a founding member of projects including Miss High Heel, Lake of Dracula, To Live and Shave in L.A. 2, 7000 Dying Rats, and Hatewave.
Walter moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, where he reformed The Flying Luttenbachers with the addition of bassist Mike Green, guitarist Ed Rodriguez, and later Mick Barr. The Flying Luttenbachers officially disbanded in 2007.
In late 2009, Walter announced that he was moving to New York City to join Behold... The Arctopus as the band's second drummer. He played on Horrorscension, released in 2012, and in two tours before leaving the band in 2013. Walter continued finding new collaborators and formed a number of groups in New York, among them Cellular Chaos, a band with Marc Edwards, Admiral Grey, and Ceci Moss.
In 2017, after a ten-year hiatus, the Flying Luttenbachers played several shows in France, with a new trio lineup of Walter, on drums, joined by bass guitarist Tim Dahl and guitarist Chris Welcome. In 2019, a quartet arrangement of the band released Shattered Dimension, with Walter and Dahl joined by saxophonist Matt Nelson and guitarist Brandon Seabrook. Over the next several years, the varying lineup also included bassist Evan Lipson, guitarist Henry Kaiser, guitarist Wendy Eisenberg, guitarist Katie Battistoni, guitarist Alex Ward, and drummer Sam Ospovat.
Discography
As solo artist
- Revolt Music
- Early Recordings 1988–1991
- Firestorm
- Large Group Performances 2007-2009
- Apocalyptik Paranoia
- Invasion
- Ominous Telepathic Mayhem
- Improvised Music Sampler
- End Of An Error
- Fragments
- Half-Death
- Tribute To 'B' and 'C' List Musicians From The Early Years Of MTV, And G.G. Allin
- For Andrew Ortmann
- Seriously: Fuck The Entire World
- Igneity: After The Fall Of Civilization
- Curses
- She's So 60 Minutes of Heavy
- The Inevitable
- Expensive Taste
- Skhiizm
- The Best of the Worst
- ''Action/Time/Vision - 8 Drum Solos''
As band member
;with Behold... The Arctopus;with Burmese
- Colony Collapse Disorder
- Lun Yurn
- Demo Live 5.12.11
- Cellular Chaos EP
- Cellular Chaos
- Diamond Teeth Clenched
- Dirty Girl
- Respekt The Demo
- Encenathrakh
- The 2 Song Promo 19
- Live Album
- Thraakethraaeate Thraithraake
- Studio Album
- Live at WNUR 2-6-92
- Constructive Destruction
- Destroy All Music
- Revenge of the Flying Luttenbachers
- Gods of Chaos
- Retrospektiw III
- "...The Truth Is a Fucking Lie..."
- Alptraum
- Trauma
- Infection and Decline
- Retrospektiw IV
- Systems Emerge from Complete Disorder
- The Void
- Spectral Warrior Mythos
- Cataclysm
- Incarceration by Abstraction
- Destroy All Music Revisited
- Shattered Dimension
- Imminent Death
- Negative Infinity
- Terror Iridescence
- Spectral Warrior Mythos 2
- Losing The War Inside Our Heads
- Demo 1997
- Hatewave
- Lake Of Dracula
- Four Teachers / Violators 7"
- Skeletal Remains
- Retrovirus
- 3x3 EP
- Urge To Kill
- Live In Zurich
- Brutal Measures
- ''Un Usper''
Collaborations
;with Sheik Anorak & Mario Rechtern- The Forbidden Beat
- Last Distractions
- Flayed
- Quodlibet
- Catastrophe of Minimalism
- Cryptocrystalline
- Incantation Sublimation
- Jazz Free
- Branches Choke
- Eruption
- Mysteries Beneath The Planet
- Blood Of The Earth
- Solar Emission
- Lacerate
- Katyusha
- Poisonous
- Eponymous
- Oculus Ex Abyssus
- Idiomatic
- The Paradox of Tolerance
- Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter
- Live In Texas
- Untitled ug 79
- Endless Punishment
- Den Svarta Fanan
- Farm Fresh
- Particles
- Dragonfly Breath
- Dragonfly Breath III: Live At The Stone: Megaloprepus Caerulatus
- American Free
- Hard Living
- Throes are the Only Trouble
- Lichens
- No Refunds
- Großes Messer
- End of the Trail
- Opulence
- Mystery Meat
- Electric Fruit
- Mechanical Malfunction
- Pioneer Works vol. 1
- Pioneer Works vol. 2
- Ninja Star Danger Rock
- The Starbreak Splatterlight
- Plane Crash
- Plane Crash Two
- Astral Plane Crash
- ProtestMusic
- Trapeze
- L'Ora Del Pasto
- Jus
- Tribute to Masayuki Takayanagi
- In the Absence of Compromise
- Fuck Music... Tell Jokes - You'll Make More Money
- A Railroad Spike Forms The Voice
- No Mor Musik
- Alloy
- Unplanned Obsolescence
- Drawn and Quartered
- Cauterized
- Maximalism
- Kompromat
- Walter/Weinberg/Fraser / Maestro Day split
- Grist
- Weinberg/Leguía/Walter
- Ventricles
- Scowl
- ''Mermaids and Sirens Know''