Fire! Orchestra- Second Exit (2014)

Fire! Orchestra- Second Exit (2014)

The Fire! Trio (expanded version) of Mats Gustafsson, Jonah Berthling and Andreas Werlin is quickly back again, after a powerful mind-bending and genre daring record made last year, this time Fire! Returns in its Orchestra mode for another great musical experience with no boundaries, for open minds reflecting a great display of energy, immediately bringing to mind close ties to the spirit of large sixties and seventies experimental and “out there” ensembles like Sun Ra`s Arkestra, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago or the Liberation Music Orchestra of Charlie Haden, a legendary collaborator of the great free jazz master Ornette Coleman.

Man of powerful horns Mats Gustafsson and company engage in an all-out battle with free music, expanding the trio brutal parameters to a more rhythmic rich stance, and with a more robust section of blaring horns, creating a monster of many heads whose hallucinating and cosmic sound now has a face (or shall we say a voice) which reminds me of the powerful mind bending free vocal exercises of the great Jeanne Lee, Patty Waters, Yoko Ono, Mary Maria, Linda Sharrock, and if that wasn’t enough, some new and incredible colors in the guitar department, thanks to the great input of Australian master Oren Ambarchi, who laid down some astonishing guitar in the middle of the mix.

The principal characteristic of this ensemble is the enormous room to breathe that they provide to the tunes, there are pianos and keyboards clinking and zooming everywhere, adding bright touches to the palette of sounds, a brilliant and colorful work of drums and bass, this time freed completely from the minimalistic trio set, this time both musicians sound greatly benefited from the expanded form in a way that it allows them to roam carelessly thru different intense and relaxed moods, taking the pieces to unimaginable places all the way, constructing and deconstructing fascinating structures, sometimes saturating the air with their percussive battle and then craving big holes of silence for the rest of the Orchestra to fill with great effect as we can clearly enjoy in the first part of this Second Exit, simply titled Part One.

Second Part begins with a dynamic beat lead by both Berthling and Werlin, showing an great interplay that brings to mind some of the finest moment of Can, one of my favorite bands ever, only here, augmented by the great work in the cornet by Goran Kafjes, developing an intense rapport with Mats, putting high the heat level, making honor to their Fire” moniker and honoring the great tradition of the aptly named Fire Music, as we are shocked by some amazing 10 minutes of intense, dynamic and powerfully rhythmical music, then thrown into some spiritual meltdown by the powerful and dissonant vocalist fronting the orchestra, who creates a strong passage with daring Yokoesque vocal gymnastics before getting backed again by the colorful and bottomless percussions of Werlin, and then taken completely out there by Ambarchi electronic “into the void” music input, which definitely gives the Orchestra a completely new and unexplored dimension, right before launching into a final climax, where Oren and the Orchestra drop the big bomb, the ultimate chaos, the big and untamed climax, to end with a Cecil Taylor like piano to close this once again amazing experience with a trio who knows perfectly on whom to recur when the sound inside their minds is too big to be contained on the work of just three musicians creating a world of sounds so intense and timeless that really demands to be heard to be believed, becoming a big experiment that could fall apart on every minute of it, but carries on thanks to the tremendous expertise of each of its participants, and one that only helps to make Mats Gusatfsson legend and curriculum bigger and bigger.