Alptraum is the excellent eight album from Flying Luttenbachers, a completely improvised live assault recorded in the Chicago area from 1999 to 2000 that shows the band in brutal free jazz mode, rather than the free-death metal/black metal/jazz that had been the focus of their previous couple of albums. It's violent hardcore free jazz in the vein of Borbetomagus, John Zorn, and Peter Brotzmann, summoning a mass of mewling satanic worms that crawl inside your head from the lineup of Luttenbachers visionary Weasel Walter on drums and saxophonist Michael Colligan, with upright bassist Kurt Johnson and cellist Frederick Lonberg-Holm alternating on tracks. The group blasts off from the word go, Colligan's sax eliciting cobra charming drones and scalding, upper register skronk runs

alongside Weasel Walter's mixture of muscular jazz-improv drumming and combative grindcore blastbeats. However, the 22 minute long "The Green GLow" is the album's centerpiece, an epic creepout possessed by Walter's rumbling percussion and Colligan's fierce blowing, while Lonberg-Holm scrapes massive atonal howls from out of his cello and evokes a Hornbook For Witches atmosphere that makes this one an essential for fans of truly threatening heavy jazz and improv.