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Brutal prog and beyond

By Will York

IN THE LINER notes to his Music for Airports album, Brian Eno wrote, "[It] is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be ... as ignorable as it is interesting."

This article is not about ambient music; it's about a new wave of musicians who are making music that's as far from ambient as you can get. It's about rock bands that accommodate only one level of listening attention, which is full immersion (and, in some cases, submission). These are bands – Los Angeles's Upsilon Acrux, Sacramento's Hella, Washington, D.C.'s Orthrelm, New York City's Touchdown, and the most recent example, Chicago's Flying Luttenbachers, among others – that, once you put them on the stereo, you can't ignore. Their music doesn't induce calm and provides little or no space to think; it's lousy background music.

While clearly distinct from one another, these bands have some things in common: no vocals, for instance, no guitar solos (or any other kind of solos), and no "background" instruments. They write dense, hypercomplex tunes that are full of rapidly intersecting lines and lots of drums- or bass-as-lead-instrument action. And, coincidentally or not, they use unusual and predominantly stripped-down instrumental lineups: Hella and Orthrelm are guitar-drums duos, Touchdown are a bass-drums duo, the Luttenbachers are a trio with drums and two basses, and Upsilon Acrux are a five-piece with two drummers. Are they "interesting"? It's hard to ponder that question when your brain is being bombarded by waves of discordant, orchestrated chaos like the Luttenbachers' "Elfmeros" (from their recent album Infection and Decline, on Troubleman Unlimited) or by the alien complexity of any of Orthrelm's numerous recordings.

Orthrelm are the poster band for this (very much unofficial) movement, if only because they represent the furthest extreme of information overload and obsessive attention to compositional detail. They played here three times this past May; the first and best-attended of these shows was an opening slot for the Locust and Total Shutdown at the Bottom of the Hill. They delivered a 30-minute set of guitar-and-drum madness with no pauses and no repetition. It sounded like John Coltrane and Rashied Ali's landmark saxophone-drums duet Interstellar Space, only with an out-of-his-mind metal-guitar shredder in place of Coltrane, and no improvisation. The band had memorized and rehearsed this entire "song" to death (actually, it turns out they played 14 or 15 shorter songs linked together). Onstage, they looked like two guys who spend a lot of time in their basement practicing. There's nothing fancy about their delivery – they just set up their gear and play – but the effect of their music on audiences is polarizing.

When it comes to these bands, particularly Orthrelm, people are either mesmerized and enthusiastic or perplexed and alienated by what they hear, sometimes to the point of hostility. Orthrelm drummer Josh Blair notes, "At a recent show, we finished, and someone just yelled, 'Get a life!' and I really appreciated that comment. It seems silly sometimes how long we will work on what turns into like two minutes of music, but it has never been boring or tedious to me so far. It's just what we do, and I love it. I feel in a lot of ways what we do is not particularly difficult to do, it just requires a lot of patience, a special kind of interest that Mick [Barr] and I both have to work on this music as long as it takes to get something that we are both comfortable sharing with the world."

Yet despite the often befuddled reactions, Orthrelm have been gaining die-hard supporters, with record labels from all across the country – Boston's Hydrahead, Arlington, Va.'s Tolotta, and San Diego's Three One G, in addition to New Jersey-based Troubleman – lining up to release their records and fellow musicians speaking of them with hushed admiration.

"I think it's hard for anyone to relate or feel like they have a lot in common with Orthrelm," Upsilon Acrux guitarist Paul Lai says. "I think they may be doing the most difficult music around, technically impossible and leaving little for any audience to relate to or even tap along with. I watched them play for the first time with Nels Cline – who I think is the greatest living guitarist – standing next to me, and even he was blown away."

"I think it's music that's probably gonna take people a long time to deal with," Flying Luttenbachers leader-drummer Weasel Walter says. "But once they finally deal with that, they're gonna go, 'Wow....' If you look at what Orthrelm does, they pretty much play a lifetime of music in a half hour. They could generate years of music from the amount of riffs they use in a half-hour set. That's a lot of information for people to sift through. I think if people aren't inclined to really, like, pick apart what's going on with the structure, it might even sound like they're making it all up as they go along."

Prog-nosis

This article actually began as an attempt to present the rise of the new "progressive rock" underground. But after talking to these bands, that already questionable term started to seem even more reductionist and misleading. Just as there are elements of King Crimson, Magma (and more modern prog-inspired outfits such as Japan's Ruins) in some of these bands' work, there are other influences that are just as prominent, from Captain Beefheart, free jazz, and modern death metal to no wave, Devo, and even plain old punk rock (though strictly in terms of energy and presentation, not surface-level sound). The fantastical, hippie-ish aspects of much earlier prog have been replaced with a more down-to-earth, low-fat aesthetic stripped of excess and extraneous parts. In light of all this, it's hard to imagine any of these bands going over especially well at any of the current progressive rock festivals, where despite the inherent irony, tradition remains strong.

There is no consensus among the bands as to how this stuff should be classified or what tradition it even belongs to. Upsilon Acrux are the most traditionally proggy of this bunch, so it makes sense that they're the most accepting of the progressive tag, although not without some clarification. "I find the prog term ideal because it states clearly that it's music that moves forward, at least in theory," Lai explains. "I'm not speaking of fairy tales or extended guitar/Hammond-organ solos mixed with some Mozart references. I'm only talking about the most basic meaning of the term. We have no qualms about claiming King Crimson as an influence, and a lot of other prog bands, including Henry Cow, Magma, Univers Zero, Etron Fou, Frank Zappa, etc. I personally like all the classics to some degree, including Genesis, Yes, ELP – they all have some very strong points and have made some very exceptional music along with some other stuff that really sucks, big time. [But] all these bands have laid a great foundation to work from and a method in exploring song structure, technique, and sound that is generally left untouched in rock music."

For his part, Walter half-jokingly came up with the term "brutal prog" to distinguish his group's hardened, angular style from the "flutes and fairies" tendencies of many of the more traditional progressive rock bands. He has also used the term to describe a few other bands, including Hella. But despite their energetic performances and drummer Zach Hill's constantly hyperactive, drum kit-devouring percussion frenzies, there is nothing especially brutal about Hella. Besides, Spencer Heim's six-string guitar harmonies, which run the gamut from mildly dissonant to melancholic and (gasp) pretty, ultimately have more in common with those of a band like the Smiths than they do those of Yes or Gentle Giant.

Touchdown are another band whose music, despite its twisting song structures and abundant odd time signatures, doesn't point toward much of a proggy lineage. "I really don't see us as any kind of 'genre,' " Touchdown drummer Nate Smith says. "I like a lot of '70s prog rock like Yes, ELP, etc., so that's what I think of when I think of the term 'progressive rock.' If I was in a progressive rock band, I doubt it would sound anything like Touchdown." Bassist Emily Powers is even more direct about where they're coming from: "We are a plain-old rock band. This is the rock music we make. We're not an intellectual band, even though a lot people think we are. I don't even think I can say that I'm a prog/math/whatever fan and that my musical influences are just showing up, because I don't listen to those kinds of music, though I may appreciate them. I'm a steadfast R&B fan and radio hip-hop fan. Plus, Led Zeppelin I like."

"I don't think any of us are [trying to fit into an idiom]," Walter summarizes. "It's just synthesizing influences. But it's convenient to tag it as a movement. I think all these bands feel some kind of kinship."

Outside looking in

As musical movements go, then, this one is pretty uninteresting from a nonmusical standpoint. There's no hip social scene surrounding it, no political agenda, and nothing particularly cool or sexy about most of the bands. This may be a horrible cliché, but really, it's all about the music.

So why write about it? It's certainly more than just a matter of how much rehearsal it takes to get this stuff right. In a sense, it's rather idealistic for a band like the Luttenbachers or Upsilon Acrux to put so much effort into music that is, and will likely remain, largely unfashionable. They are too intense and rocking for the Wire magazine-sponsored avant-garde, where laptops and warmed-over free improvisation are still big news. But they're also an odd fit among the sweatier (and currently more vibrant) punk-noise-no wave underground, although by default this is the circle in which they operate. (The Luttenbachers, Hella, and Orthrelm each opened various dates on this summer's high-profile Oops! tour for joint headliners the Locust, Arab on Radar, and Lightning Bolt. And the labels releasing these bands' music so far have mainly been punk/indie operations.) From the punk-bred audience's standpoint, there is still a lingering suspicion of any music that's too technically proficient or complex, no matter how much it may kick ass on a fundamental level, an unfortunate ideological holdover from the punk-versus-prog clash that began in the '70s.

Asked if they feel like outcasts in the current musical climate, Upsilon's Lai answers, "Well, we wouldn't feel like outcasts if [Upsilon Acrux, Orthrelm, and the Flying Luttenbachers] plus the Ruins toured together as the new progressive, but other than that, it's hard not to be the outcast band on every bill."

Still, outside, in fact, seems to be exactly where Lai is comfortable. "I believe that if you're not pushing yourself and the music that you're doing," he says, "there's really little point in droning on. There's already millions of bands that write stuff to be catchy, passable, and lazy, so why add your band to the mix. Anything worth doing is going to be difficult to some degree. But it's not difficulty or exclusion that we seek in music; it just so happens that this is the music that we have common interest in pursuing, and nothing short of it would satisfy any member of this band."

Touchdown's Powers echoes that last point, although she shoots down the idea that her band's music is the result of some monumental effort (an idea that is possibly the result of an overzealous, idealistic-romantic writer projecting a little personal baggage on his subjects): "Listen, it actually doesn't take too much time or effort, and our songs are not meant to confuse or perplex anyone. Plus, they aren't hard for us to play. We might have to play things over and over a bit [in practice], but it works out pretty simply and quickly. It's the only way I know how to do music, and it comes naturally and easily."

Hella guitarist Heim has an equally laid-back view of things. "We've never let ourselves think, 'Oh, it's too complex for people,' because if it is, they don't have to listen to it," he explains, in a tone suggesting not snobbery but rather an acknowledgment that this music isn't going to please everybody. "It's basically like, we write these songs and, you know, we just like to show them to people. The stuff we make up in practice ... we kind of know when we've got a part, when it just weirds us out or kind of like boggles our brains. It's almost like playing a game or something."

Taking his turn at putting these bands' efforts into some sort of context, the outspoken Walter theorizes, "If anything, you know what I think this whole thing is, is a weird subconscious reaction to the fact that punk, 30 years later, has ruined everything. Punk rock pretty much said, 'Anybody can do this,' and unfortunately now everyone is doing it, and music is suffering as a result of that. I mean, I come out of punk, but let's face it: there's a punk ethos – punk with a lowercase p – and then there's Punk™, which is, as we know, total fucking bullshit. I mean, how many more songs with barre chords do we need? From my perspective, as an intelligent person who happens to like intense, fucked-up, weird music, punk rock does not cut it anymore. Punk rock was very relevant at its onset, and a lot of it was very inspired. Now it's just a style, the way a lot of other things are. I honestly think that bands like these are reacting against the 'we had one rehearsal and here's our stupid band' thing that's clogging the underground, this laissez-faire disposability of rock."

"Mick [Barr], to me, is like exemplary," he says, turning his attention back to the Orthrelm guitarist. "All he's doing is working on this concept he's got – I can tell that fucker sits around all day and that's all he does. And I think that's miraculous. To me, that is so much more interesting as an abstract concept than a million ersatz punk-noise bands.

"Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band are great archetypes for the kind of complexity that I'm trying to reach, and hardly anyone has approached what that guy did with that band in the '70s. And if anything," he concludes, "I think that's what we as musicians aspire to, is setting the bar really high creatively, just to stand out from the crowd, even if the crowd doesn't necessarily dig it."