The Flying Luttenbachers

Between 1991 and 2007 this notorious instrumental unit wasted puny earthlings with an amorphous fusion of all things extreme and dissonant in music: hardcore-punk rawness, death-metal speed/technicality, free-jazz asymmetry, no-wave skronk, progressive-rock conceptual bombast, electronic-noise and modern-classical abstraction. Over the course of 16 full-length albums the group included jazz luminaries such as Hal Russell, Ken Vandermark, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Jeb Bishop as well as underground rock virtuosos like guitarists Mick Barr and Ed Rodriguez. The band's connection to the jazz idiom comes primarily from a thread of high energy freedom that was most apparent on punk-jazz albums such as 1995's "Destroy All Music" and the obliteratingly brutal double LP "Trauma" released in 2001. After "Trauma" the focus shifted to extremely complex rock composition while still incorporating dangerous improvisational edges.

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