Go West, Loud Man
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Soon Walter will have a chance to burn new ones–in February he’s relocating to San Francisco. It’s a good time to make the move. Nationally, his profile is high: he’s become a key player in the movement he jokingly dubs “brutal prog.” Bands like Lightning Bolt, Orthrelm, Black Dice, and the Locust have begun to combine metal, prog, noise, and improvisation much as the Luttenbachers have done for years. And Walter’s traveling light these days–bassists Jonathan Hischke and Alex Perkolup, his accomplices on the most recent Luttenbachers album, Infection and Decline (Troubleman Unlimited), are gone. (Perkolup quit; Hischke was kicked out.) Walter is touring through February as a solo act, a chancy proposition. “I’m willing to take the risk of sucking,” he says, “because without doing that there’s no progression. I’ve fallen flat on my face quite a few times, but I really don’t care. It’s research and development.”
Russell quit the band in the summer of 1992, and Walter reinvented the Luttenbachers as a rock-driven free-jazz group; the roster eventually included Vandermark, trombonist Jeb Bishop, and future Cheer-Accident guitarist Dylan Posa. Walter also began making connections on the burgeoning Wicker Park underground rock scene–some of the bands were dissonant, some punkish, some cabaret tinged, but all were united by their disregard for accessibility. The Luttenbachers began playing regularly with the likes of Trenchmouth, the Scissor Girls, and Quintron at now defunct venues like Milk of Burgundy and Czar Bar; Walter dubbed this circle the Chicago no-wave scene. The Monday-night free-improv series he launched at Myopic Books became an incubator for the city’s thriving free-music scene, giving musicians their first performing opportunities and bringing together players from disparate scenes to improvise. Jim O’Rourke, Jeb Bishop, and Sue Anne Zollinger were among the series’s earliest participants.
Walter hopes that San Francisco’s vibrant scene, home to both no-wavish combos like Erase Errata and confrontational noise maven John Dwyer of Pink and Brown, will help nurture this new musical phase. “I’ve wanted to get out of here for a long time, but I never really found a place where I felt, ‘Oh, this is where I should be,’” he says. “Right now I feel like the creative energy for what I’m interested in is there. I think I’m more well received there. It’s a new context. I’m willing to go where the love is. I’m not doing this to be alienated. I’m doing this to communicate with people.”
