‘Brutal prog’ maestro Weasel Walter debuts a Chicago lineup of the Flying Luttenbachers

Guitarist and drummer Weasel Walter, the “brutal prog” purveyor best known as longtime leader of the Flying Luttenbachers, left Chicago in 2003 for San Francisco and later moved to New York—but he sure has been popping up around here an awful lot lately. This wolf is starting to suspect he’s living in our town once again! In March, a new lineup of Walter’s ripping avant-glam-rock band, Cellular Chaos, debuted in furiously fine fettle at Elastic Arts. And on Tuesday, June 7, Walter will introduce a brand-new Luttenbachers lineup at Burlington Bar, where he’ll play guitar backed by two similarly formidable Chicago talents—bassist Alex Perkolup (who’s also played in Cheer-Accident, Greg Jacobsen’s group Lovely Little Girls, and the early-2000s lineup of the Luttenbachers) and drummer Charlie Werber (from Lovely Little Girls, prog-metal squad Guzzlemug, and black-metal explorers Murmur and Surachai). In April the New York incarnation of the Luttenbachers dropped a scabrous and delightfully menacing new album, the fully improvised Terror Iridescence, and it’ll be released on LP via Austrian label God Records this fall. 

^{Weasel Walter has assembled new Chicag0-based lineups of both these bands.}

Rapper Saint Icky and electronic producer Please (and the labels they run, Bad Luck Records and Issa Party, respectively) have done a lot to help Chicago’s underground music communities thrive and sprout new offshoots. They’ve often worked together too, and this Friday, June 3, they’re dropping a collaborative EP called Green New Deal. On the single “Designed Up,” Icky’s flow mirrors the sharpness of Please’s skittering beats, and they both contrast with the hazy synths that waft through the song. The rest of the project isn’t streaming yet, but on Thursday, June 2, you can see for yourself if it’s loaded with the same sort of eerie thrills top to bottom—Icky and Please perform the whole EP that night as part of the Auda Rave at Sleeping Village. 

^{Green New Deal is the latest of several collaborations between Saint Icky and Please.}

Underground Chicago art-pop experimentalist Zango the Third is one of this wolf’s favorite emerging artists. The clattering, bluesy sound of “Symptom, Admirable Skill,” off Zango’s new full-length, Dog Tooth, captures the same kind of outré exuberance that made Beck a sensation in the early 90s. If that description makes you want to hear the whole album booming out of a big sound system, you’re in luck—on Thursday, June 2, Golden Dagger hosts a free Dog Tooth listening party starting at 8 PM.

^{The listening party for Dog Tooth is free, but you do need to be at least 21.}