In the Fall of 1991 Chad Himmel and Rob Nelson had both written about 20-30 songs apiece. So they decided to go in a recording studio to record some of those songs, Crude Material is what resulted, a collection of 10 acoustic songs featuring Andy (“Man of Science and Adventure”) Laska on percussion. They decided to call the band Alter Klang after a Paul Klee painting. And released the songs on cassette.
A year later Rob Nelson moved to Austin and
Alter Klang continued. They teamed up with Mike and Dub and
recorded 100s of hours of music and close to 100 songs.
This was a prolific time between 1992-1994. Some of this
music is stored away on reel-to-reel 8 tracks somewhere.
However nothing quite materialized from the all the effort,
and much of the music was lost. Somewhere in here
the name of the band changed to Walter Klang
In 1995 two of the members left, so Chad Himmel and Rob Nelson booked some time in a recording studio to try and document some of the music that had emerged over the proceeding 2 years. In the Fall of 1995 they reserved 2 days at Breakfast Surreal Studios in Austin, Texas (run by Lowell Smith). They managed to record 21 songs at that time. This was consolidated down to a single collection of 13 songs and called Whether Be Petrified
In 1996 they returned to Breakfast Surreal twice. First in the Spring and then in the Summer. In the Spring they booked the studio for 2 days and recorded the 12 songs that make up Further Travels (of Pinnatley Frond)
Later that Summer they visited the studios one more time. This time booking 4 days. In an ambitious project they recorded 23 songs. It was consolidated down to one collection and entitled The Escape of the Children
In 1997 the members of Walter Klang had dispersed across the United States - from Seattle to Nashville to New York to San Antonio. So it seemed like that was the end of the story
By 2001 three of the original members had returned to Austin - so the band reformed. Just like the 1992-1994 period they have recorded 100s of hours of music - and nothing has quite materialized. This time the music has been recorded digitally so it is not buried on reel-to-reel tapes. This site contains a record of all those recordings starting from May, 2001.