Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Fire! - (without noticing) [Rune Grammofon]

Fire!
Mats Gustafsson - tenor and baritone saxophones, organ, fender rhodes and electronics
Johan Berthling - bass and piano
Andreas Werliin - drums



Rune Grammofon 2013




The complexity and diversity of Gustafsson's artistic oeuvre is quite astonishing, driven by deep passion he creates music that can be both elaborated as insanely wild, pure abstract, energetic rock'n'roll or tear-drenching ballad. After a whole week with Nu Ensemble, Mats comes back tonight for one evening with the group that played recent summer at the indie music festival OFF in Katowice. Fire! is a project that lives on the fringes of rock, with little focus on jazz or free improvisation.

Fire! music is born from potent riffs, a bow in direction of krautrock psychodelia. The music might charge you steady and unstoppable like an armoured tank ("would I whip (without noticing)") or burn slowly ("your silhoutte on each (without noticing)"). The vibrato-laden, muscular baritone sax rides incessant drumbeat and bass riff. Fire!'s music might seem simplistic but there's immense joy in following the three on the hypnotic rock rollercoaster.
"tonight. more. much more (without noticing)" starts slow and heavy blues riff and fender rhodes drones giving a piece a spaced-out feel. The "molting slowly (without noticing)" is a damaged rock ballad, with gutt-wrenching tenor sax screaming through spare bass notes echoing slowly in the air and freewheeling percussion lightly dancing on the plates (the piece slows down in the second half for a slowly burning baritone solo). The album features two relatvely short solo electronic pieces as well, with the last one, a mirage of heavily distored rhodes sounds bringing a nice closure the disc (available both as cd as lp).

"(without noticing)" does not necessarily improve or developes significantly upon the previous albums of the trio ("Unreleased" recorded with Jim O'Rourke appeared on the blog in the past). But it's a collection of damn good music. Additionally Fire! is one of those groups you might easily recommend to your less jazz or avant oriented music fellows. Those who know and enjoy the previous positions in the discography should appreciate the hell out of this one as well, those who don't won't like this one neither. For those who are about to krautrock - I Fire! you.

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