Fire! - The Hands

The Quietus

Life gets heavy. It seems to gather increasing weight and density as you progress through it until you either reach a point where you feel able to discard this accumulated mass or you let it drag you down and you spend endless days and nights carting a ballast of woe and regret with you in every move you make. Eventually, that becomes unsustainable and the very structures which keep you alive and moving will collapse under this dark pressure. You become like a deep sea behemoth floating ever downwards under the weight of the clustered barnacles and limpets which have attached themselves to your outer surface and fed upon your life force.

Unless you do something. Make something. Don’t let existence turn you into Mek-Quake’s next order of “Big Jobs!” even as he’s chewing up twisted pieces of sentient machinery in his robotic jaws with you waiting in line. There is something of that desperate desire to communicate, to move on and to validate oneself in whatever world possible, in the brutal yet cathartic pummelling of Fire!’s sixth album. As tools must be found in order to salvage wrecks, so The Hands rip you through the weary dregs and exhausted lows until some form of forward momentum can finally be engaged. You need hands.

Despite my initial misgivings around their debut 2009 release, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, and a suspicion that this was a short-lived side project for the three players, Fire! have grown in stature and strength with each album ploughing deeper and heavier into their increasingly ferocious take on drone rock spliced with free jazz. Johan Berthling’s bass on The Hands now sounds dredged up from the same overloaded and engorged morass as Al Cisneros’s playing in Sleep. He’s amply matched by Andreas Werliin’s drum work sliding effortlessly from nimble tom patters to bone-crunching troll beats while Mats Gustafsson, whose sax has never sounded more bloodied and bruised than it does here, now has a three-piece unit easily The Thing’s equal in sheer heft and force.

Consisting of seven relatively short pieces across 36 minutes, The Hands plays like a succession of scenes or vignettes all attempting to communicate some opaque and unsayable knowledge. The title track opens the album with scrapes and scratches before detonating into a sharp metallic groove over which Gustafsson’s sax squeals with such ferocious focus that you can picture the whites of his eyes boring into your skin. Other tracks, such as ‘When Her Lips Collapsed’ and ‘Touches Me With The Tips of Wonder’, have Gustafsson playing as a gurgling guttural wail, a blues from a snowy grave, or mournfully smearing himself in solace and sorrow across Berthling and Werliin’s solid yet ever-shifting rhythms.

Ultimately, The Hands is a cold and forbidding landscape to find yourself in. Even when Berthling switches to double bass on ‘Washing Your Heart in Filth’, the piece which comes closest to straightahead free jazz complete with half-broken swing, there is a sense of furtive and desperate movements, of battling against a stifling vacuum and the constant wariness of an unexpected surge in threat level. Throughout the record we also hear fragments of voices - muttering, stuttering, vocal tics and chirps which seem to come from some far-off loudspeaker and are perhaps trying to warn us of some imminent danger. But where these voices come from and what they are trying to guard us against remains impenetrable.

Finally, ‘I Guard Her to Rest. Declaring Silence’ begins with tremulous tenor sax before blossoming into a place of sanctuary and rest from the austere battering which has preceded it. It’s a bit like being softly wrapped into a cocoon, and as the piece progresses there is the sound of scratching and chirruping as if tiny creatures were surrounding you, healing your wounds and tending to your bleeding cuts and bruises. It leaves you with a faintly luminous trace of hope.

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Mon Feb 12 12:10:49 GMT 2018

The Free Jazz Collective 100


By Gustav Lindqvist

Like myself reeds player Mats Gustafsson grew up in the northern parts of Sweden, that is; the real northern parts of Sweden where, during the winter months, the sun just barely crawls over the horizon just to give you a cheeky look as to say: “did you really think I was going to shine on you today?”, before going back down. Winter months by the way means October to April. Mats and I grew up in different generations, but when listening to The Hands, I feel that he’s speaking straight to the part of my northern Swedish mind which, without being sad, depressed or melancholic states that when the horizon brightens it may very well be the deceiving light. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not have any tendencies towards seeing life on this planet as meaningless. I love the work of the late Hans Roslings ‘Gapminder’ and I think that we can build a better world together, however embracing that ‘no life without death, no death without life’ is also important. Understanding and not ignoring the darker side of life is crucial for our (my) existence.

I’m not trying to banter, but when Gustafsson, Berthling and Werliin throws down the gauntlet on the title track The Hands’ I immediately feel like I understand exactly what they’re trying to say. The whole album is begging to be played at an excruciatingly high volume. I can hear a connection to Gustafsson's work on ‘A quietness of water’. Where Gustafsson/Evans/Fernandez were looking inwards to seek out sounds of an inner space full of feelings and emotions, Fire! is allowing the those sounds to come out in full bloom.

Gustafsson should be known to most readers here, having worked with…well everyone on the free jazz scene. He’s also doing regular work for the Swedish jazz magazine Orkesterjournalen, he has a vinyl trading website and a vinyl collection which carries more free jazz rarities than one can imagine. He’s touring with multiple groups and has also published a book about record collecting; Discaholics Vol. 1. Drummer and percussionist Andreas Werliin can be heard with Angels 9, Fire! Orchestra, and Tonbruket to just mention a few. Double bassist Johan Berthling is also a familiar name here and except his work on Angels 8 and 9, I’d like to recommend checking out Nacka Forum, again just to mention a few. This is indeed a very seasoned trio. ‘Supergroup’ has been said, and I can only agree.

The title track ‘The Hands’ has a thick carpet of drums and electric bass on which Gustafsson marches onwards without hesitation. He leaves it all out there. Nothings secret anymore. ‘When Her Lips Collapsed’ seems closely tied together with the first track, but at a slower pace. ‘Touches Me With The Tips Of Wonder’ allows the listener to breath and relax for a while, while the dark clouds pass by. But it of course deceiving. The manic ritual drum beat that follows to introduce the fourth track ‘Washing Your Hands In Filth’ takes us right back to where we started. This track is sure to shake a live audience in its foundations. It builds up intensity and I can only wish that it was a little bit longer. Maybe the live version is? ‘Up. And Down’ is a natural progression of the previous track and provides balance to the madness like a much-needed intermezzo. Yet half-way through, Gustafsson switches gears and increases intensity. That’s what he does. No compromises. The longest track on this album, ‘To Shave The Leaves. In Red. In Black’, is an emotional journey on which Gustafsson is given more time to tell his story. It’s very rewarding and it’s 9 minutes that speaks straight to my heart. The last song, ‘I Guard Her To Rest. Declaring Silence’ is a naked and introspective walk on lonely streets. I’m not left exhausted, I’m left staring out the window, somehow content with the here and now. It’s all going to be alright….or it’s all going to hell.

Sun Feb 11 05:00:00 GMT 2018

The Free Jazz Collective 80


By Martin Schray

With their sixth album, it’s a good opportunity to reflect Fire!’s work so far. In 2009 Mats Gustafsson (saxes, electronics, Fender Rhodes), Johan Berthling (bass, organ) and Andreas Werliin (drums, percussion) started with You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, introducing their idea of music at the interface of jazz, blues and rock. Their sophomore album Unreleased (2011) - which was accompanied by the sister 10’inch Released - added new colors to the sound of the debut. Berthling changed to electric bass and the trio invited a guest musician - Jim O’Rourke on guitar. With their third album In the Mouth a Hand (2012), they elaborated this concept, this time they were augmented by Oren Ambarchi (guitar, electronics). The band focused more on drones and noise, without neglecting their roots - up to today this is my favorite Fire! recording. One year later the band put the rock influences in the center of their music, Johan Berthling delivered gloomy metal riffs on (Without Noticing) while Mats Gustafsson on electronics and Fender Rhodes shows the more meditative side of the band. Two years ago She Sleeps, She Sleeps brought Oren Ambarchi back and - as a another new sound element - Leo Svensson Sander on cello, but the album wasn’t as excessive as In the Mouth a Hand, it was rather a masterpiece in reduction and monotony, a heart-breaking yearning for something that’s been lost. Now, The Hands concentrates on the plain sax, bass and drums formation.

Once again, the album presents the band’s usual mix of heavy, sombre, and intense psych blues rock. Yet, while She Sleeps, She Sleeps and (Without Noticing) indulged into the first two Black Sabbath albums, this one rather refers to bands like Blue Cheer and Mountain, Berthling’s distorted bass guitar even to grunge rock veterans Green River and Mudhoney here and there - great requirements for another superb album. And The Hands starts promising: the title track is a real rock burner with a catchy, colossal three-note bass riff and a straight beat, Gustafsson’s sax replaces the lead vocals, howling and yelling in his typical manner. It’s just pure fun! Additionally, the album has more of this stuff to offer: "When Her Lips Collapsed", "Up. And Down" and "To Shave the Leaves. In Red. And Black" use a similar compositional matrix, they just decelerate the tempo. The remaining three songs reveal a different approach, they build the bridge to She Sleeps, She Sleeps: "Touches Me With the Tips of Wonder","Washing Your Heart in Filth" and "I Guard Her to Rest. Declaring Silence" have a balladesque and reflective note, an almost funereal character. Especially the latter is a captivating ultra-slow blues (here with Berthling on double bass), in which Gustafson’s qualities as a melodist come to shine.

However, The Hands can’t quite compete with (Without Noticing) or other classic Fire! releases, because it somehow lacks the emotional depth and the variety of sound of these albums. Also, I’ve always liked the fact that Werliin and Gustafsson were able to dance around Berthling’s rock-solid bass figures, that he allowed them room for various sound excursions. Here they seem a bit restrained, especially Werliin often concentrates on playing time instead of going astray.

The Hands is a very good album, no doubt. It’s a great start for Fire! beginners, you aren't overwhelmed by it (like a typical 1960s rock album it’s just 37 minutes long). But if you want the real deal I would rather suggest She Sleeps, She Sleeps or In the Mouth a Hand.

The Hands is available on vinyl and on CD. you can buy it from the label www.runegrammofon.com or at www.downtownmusicgallery.com.

Listen to the title track here:









Sun Feb 11 04:59:00 GMT 2018