Fire! with Jim O'Rourke - Unreleased (Rune Grammofon, 2011) *****

By Stef

On their previous album, "You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago", I compared Fire! to a modern day Pink Floyd of the early period, with long hypnotic and epic rhythms over which endless wails of humanity are woven, and this album is no different, even accentuating the effects, exceeding its predecessor in quality and listening experience, building more volume and effects with Jim O'Rourke on guitar, joining the original trio of Mats Gustafsson, on sax and Fender Rhodes, Johan Berthling on bass and Andreas Werliin on drums, creating long psychedelic atmospheres with rock rhythms, endlessly repetitive, creating tension and expectation and suspense, with odd electronic colors and shadings, providing the subtle backdrop for the expected, anticipated and hoped for explosion of sound that will offer relief from this endless repetition, and for sure it comes, eventually, when you're exhausted, when you think it will never stop, and when it comes, it is either in the form of the most incredible human wail ever to come out of a saxophone, full of agony, anguish, fear, distress, helplessness, need, pain, and it goes on and on, howling, howling, howling, like no musician has ever used a saxopone, like you've never heard the instrument before, so close to the human voice in all its aspects and emotions and feelings, yet hair-raising, bone-chilling, devastating, massive, or in the most plaintive nerve-wrecking repetitive high-toned single guitar chords that create dark, inhospitable, intense sound environments supported by the relentless rhythms that go on and on and on and because of their hypnotism you have no other choice than to be sucked into this universe of pain, like a moth into the flame, into the fire ... again and again and again.

Not to be missed. Not jazz, but not to be missed.



The album is better than the clip below, but it will give you an idea of what to expect.




© stef