Review Summary: It burns.
I cannot exaggerate to a certain degree the difficulty it took to put this following blurb down onto the document in front of me. Jazz as a whole, while forever enchanting, continues to elude me. While I listen to it on a daily basis, when it comes to even considering writing something about the genre, it comes across as a gargantuan task that seems nigh impossible. Today, however, I came to a conclusion – it hardly matters how hard it may seem, the effort and the passion of writing something about something you like trumps all. Which led me to this album, and the decision to write something,
anything if I could, about
Fire!.
Fire!, a Sweden-based trio consisting of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin, came to be out of a desire to bring a new approach to improvised music. Their primary influences being free jazz, psychedelia and noise,
Fire! was also formed with the intention to push its members to their limits. Their third and latest effort,
She Sleeps, She Sleeps is perhaps their most uncompromising record yet – and for reasons unknown, it’s also remarkably accessible to boot.
It broods, it lounges, but it never stays in one place for too long. The four pieces that make up
She Sleeps all come together to form something that melds the free jazz influence (most notably that of Coltrane, Sanders and Cherry) with blistering segments of noise. The workout of
”She Owned His Voice” evokes imagery of a dimly-lit, smoke-filled bar in the recesses of New York as it slinks along without never really letting you go. The title track, on the other hand, introduces a veil of electronics that never overpower the trio but is a necessary component of the piece. The second cour of the album,
”She Bid A Meaningless Farewell” and
”She Penetrates The Distant Silence, Slowly”, both contrast greatly from each other yet are the most atmospheric pieces of jazz I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a long while. The former picks up the pace in favor of a restless and increasingly grinding groove, the rhythm section being let loose and almost seemingly having control over the direction of the workout. The latter shifts toward the ultimate of slow burners, bringing the speed of its preceding track to a halt; atonality makes its mark here, for its eighteen minutes of sluggish, disciplined playing from here on out. The great restraint the trio show here goes to show that it’s not exactly necessary to fill out a long track such as this with blinding soloes, but can persist on mood and a beat alone.
Fire! could’ve easily used this time for something more avant-garde but instead went for a route that allowed them to create a piece of music that is not only resolute, but is something that any hardened jazz lover would herald as innovative perhaps. It doesn’t innovate in the sense that it brings something new to the table, but it enforces the idea that sometimes less is most definitely more.
