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Best of 2021

Fire!

Defeat

Label: Rune Grammofon

Format: CD

Genre: Jazz

Out of stock

**CD edition** Fire! Orchestra tracking new paths and reaching new levels of excellence, still honoring their 12-year-old vow of presenting a fresh approach to improvised music. Their debut album, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, was released in 2009 to wide international acclaim. "The basic strategy of pairing the expressive energy of free jazz with a sturdy sense of groove has yielded something potent and self-contained" --New York Times. Between this and Defeat there´s been five albums, including collaborations with Jim O'Rourke (2011) and Oren Ambarchi (2012). No two Fire! records sound the same, but with Defeat they have taken their biggest leap so far, with Mats Gustafsson giving the flute a prominent place in the sound image, a surprising and most successful move, his both expressive and ornamental approach given ample room to breathe, especially on the two long tracks bookending the album. In places more subdued than on previous efforts, but with the distinctive bass figures and hypnotic mood fully intact. There are some lively stretches with guests Goran Kajfes and Mats Aleklint, bringing to mind their big band offshoot Fire! Orchestra, albeit on a smaller scale. For over 20 years Rune Grammofon have made a habit of releasing music that is beyond easy classification, in later years typified by Hedvig Mollestad, Elephant9, and Krokofant, but cemented by Fire! and their exploratory curiosity and deep love of music in general. Many have tried to compare the trio to other groups, but listening to Defeat you realize how futile this is. Given the above there´s no doubt there are many influences at play, but the resulting brew is in a class by itself. Personnel: Mats Gustafsson - flute, baritone sax, live electronics; Johan Berthling - electric bass; Andreas Werliin - drums; Goran Kajfes - quartertone trumpet; Mats Aleklint - trombone, sousaphone, horn arrangements.

Details
Cat. number: RCD2217
Year: 2021
Defeat features two guests — Goran Kajfes on quarter-tone trumpet, and Mats Aleklint on trombone and sousaphone — and adding their voices to the ensemble, both as choral elements and as soloists, gives the music a pleasing fullness.Read more

Fire!, Gustafsson´s trio with bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin, has quieted down somewhat on their new album too. Granted, 2018’s The Hands ended with “I Guard Her To Rest. Declaring Silence”, but still, hearing Gustafsson on flute, of all things, on this disc’s opening track “A Random Belt. Rats You Out” is a surprise (to be sure, he hoots and yawps through the flute, his need for noise irrepressible). Behind him, the rhythm section lays down an almost krautrock groove. Defeat features two guests — Goran Kajfes on quarter-tone trumpet, and Mats Aleklint on trombone and sousaphone — and adding their voices to the ensemble, both as choral elements and as soloists, gives the music a pleasing fullness, particularly on the second half of the two-part “Each Millimeter Of The Toad”. The trance-like patterns Berthling and Werliin play have elements of North African music at times, particularly on “Defeat (Only Further Apart)”, which also features a killer trombone solo and long wavering horn lines like winds blowing across the burning sands. The album’s final track “Alien (To My Feet)” is perhaps its most meditative, Gustafsson’s flute humming and whistling over a bass throb as deep as an undersea trench.

- The Wire