8. The Flying Luttenbachers—Infection and Decline (2002)
Chaos from order. Order from chaos. These are the terms I think in when I hear The Flying Luttenbachers album
Infection and Decline. This is the sound of a million things happening at once. The entire planet has erupted into a flurry of activity as more and more stones from the sky rain down on the surface and the militaries of every nation of Earth swing into action. Nuclear missiles arc into the exosphere, filling the night sky with brilliant flashes of sunlight as rocky interlopers are obliterated. Jets scream through the clouds, tearing at the wind as they fire rocket after rocket at the smaller debris falling toward the surface. Politicians scamper away like cockroaches into mountain bunkers. The unwashed masses rage in the streets like unwashed masses.
During the Luttenbachers sixteen years of existence they made some of the most complex, bizarre, cacophonous music around—and believe it or not,
Infection and Decline is actually one of their more accessible albums. Revolving around the nucleus of Weasel Walter, they were a constantly changing group of musicians from a wide range of backgrounds (including free jazz sax player Hal Russell in the band's original incarnation) whose style absorbed everything from punk to jazz to classical and shat out a total sonic assault. This album is, arguably, their rock 'n' roll album. Rock 'n' roll, that is, which has been smashed into a thousand pieces and reassembled into some incredibly odd and off-putting mosaic, but rock 'n' roll nonetheless.
I actually had kind of a difficult time deciding exactly which album by these guys I wanted to include in this part of the list. There were several candidates but I felt like
Infection and Decline was among the most consistently high energy of their releases. This one is really not for the squeamish, however if notions of music as complex as some theoretical physicist's doctoral thesis mixed with balls out rawk are appealing to you, you probably should give this album a spin.
Below is a little sample of the first ten minutes of the last track on the album, a song called "De Futura". Keep in mind that this is by far the most traditionally riff-centric and catchy song on the album: