Liz Allbee/Sharon Cheslow/Weasel Walter, "Plants That Kill" (Curor Recordings, 2007)

Liz Allbee/Sharon Cheslow/Weasel Walter, Plants That Kill cd-r
Curor Recordings, 2007

A three-way collaboration between Liz Allbee, Sharon Cheslow, and Weasel Walter, or the sound of a tropical disease as it seeps through your pores, peeling away the last remaining layers of your earthly senses and leaving only a caterpillar filled brain-case behind in Peruvian nightmares? Plants That Kill is a no-wave trip spiraling deeply into endless reverbrations of Ayahuasca dreaming and inspired-by-toxins tropical death-jazz. An electric brew of poisonous improvisations whose exotic variety of tone and colour lure you inwards, just as the venom seizes your nervous system, leaving you frozen in place, sweating to the sounds of an immense Amazon Rainforest totally indifferent to your desperation and impending decomposition. Each of "Plants That Kill"'s ten tracks are named after a particular sample of fatal flora, a concept credited to Liz Allbee. The cd's sleeve art also reflects this concept, with a leafy green aesthetic that is as enticing as it is forbidding. I'm completely blown-away by the music on this disc, as each member of this trio performs in ways I'd never have expected from them, making "Plants That Kill" even more of a toxic treat. I would be in a state of total shock if this cd didn't sell-out soon, but that could just be the green talking.

Review Archive Series #8: The Flying Luttenbachers, Cataclysm cd

The following review represents one in a series of reviews published during my tenure as the resident music critic and assistant Arts Editor for The Phoenix, the official student newspaper of UBC-Okanagan in Kelowna, B.C. They are being reprinted here because I feel that while these reviews might represent a point of serious-suckitude in the developement of my writing, they are examples of my earliest attempts at criticism (if jerking off on an album's cover can be considered criticism), and above all: these albums desperately deserve the attention of your tinnitus-damaged ears.















The Flying Luttenbachers, Cataclysm
ugEXPLODE, 2006

Weasel Walter is on a mission to make modern music his prison bitch. Having penetrated the gaping-asshole blackness of godless infinity on 2004's The Void, Cataclysm finds the self-described 'free-chromaticist' and his partners in 21st century compositional crime, Mike Green, Ed Rodriguez, and the inimitable Mick Barr, celebrating "the inevitable self destruction of decadent, tyrannical, or non-sustainable systems." Wowza. Well...if there is one thing you can't accuse Weasel Walter of, it's not taking his music seriously enough. Case in point: on one of the albums stand-out tracks, the Luttenbachers cover the fourth movement of French composer Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension;" which accentuates the album's conceptual framework while attesting to Walter's affinity for twentieth-century avant-garde composition. The most recent addition to the Luttenbachers line-up, Mick Barr, makes his manic mark all over Cataclysm, delivering his best shredding since Orthrelm's obscene 2005 masterwork, OV. Showing no signs of slowing down, this iridescent behemoth of a band continues to hybridize itself and its sound; incorporating every conceivable genre from brutal progressive rock and no-wave skronk to technically absurd avant-jazz and beyond. Give Weasel Walter your money!