With FIRE!, Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling (Tape) and Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds and Peace Drums) are building a new language of improvised music with inspiration drawn from garage rock, free jazz, Sweden's esteemed history of electro-acoustic and experimental music and everyday industrial sound pressure. FIRE! is also a collaborative venture - at its most extreme expanding to an orchestral scale with an ensemble of 30 musicians - and regularly performing with a guest augmenting the trio. They've previously worked with Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi and invited Christian Marclay, Stian Westerus and Sofia Jernberg to join them for what turned out to be two extraordinary days of music here in March. For this one-off concert they'll be joined by special guests Otomo Yoshihide on guitar and Mariam Wallentin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Fire! Orchestra) on vocals.

Photo: FIRE! at Cafe OTO by Fabio Lugaro.

FIRE!

Mats Gustafsson - saxophones, Fender Rhodes and electronics
Johan Berthling - bass
Andreas Werliin - drums and percussion.

Fire! is a trio from Sweden with members from The Thing, Tape, Wildbirds and Peacedrums, creating a mix of slow down – speeded up, distorted versions of contemporary experimental music.

With inspiration from mining, large lorry engines, electro acoustic music from Sweden and a large variety of creative garage rock and free jazz, FIRE! is building up a new language and models for how improvised music can be done. The idea for the group came from enigmatic concert promoter Conny Lindström and he booked us a first gig at the small bar at restaurant Riche in Stockholm. The sheer volume made the bar personnel hold on the glasses in fear they would crack of the soundpressure. Everybody enjoyed themselves and later on time was booked for sessions at Tape´s small studio in the industrial parts of Stockholm.

The sound that came out was a mixture of all three members backgrounds and we didn´t shy away from overdubs and other methods.

The first album “You liked me five minutes ago” was recorded in Stockholm and released in 2009. They've since operated frequently with guests in tow including Jim O´Rourke who plays electric guitar on 2011's 'Unreleased?' LP and Oren Ambarchi who adds his distinctive bass throb and searching electronics to 2012's exceptional 'In the Mouth, A Hand'. They've since expanded exponentially as the Fire! Orchestra - taking the project to the next level: a sonic behemoth comprising 28 members from Swedish jazz, improv and avant rock that should be unmanageable, but turns out to possess the elegance and lucidity of the righteous free jazz big bands of the past: Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra. Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill”. Centipede. Sun Ra’s “Space Is The Place”. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath...

earthwindand.com
www.runegrammofon.com/artists/fire_



OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / guitar

Otomo Yoshihide is one of the most important musicians of the Japanese underground/avant-garde. He moves between free jazz, noise, improvisation, composition and the unclassifiable with a generosity that opens up the possibilities for expression in all of the constellations with which he's involved. He spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band which played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn't long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz.



In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra.



MARIAM WALLENTIN / vocals

Mariam Wallentin is one half of Wildbirds and Peacedrums (together with FIRE!'s Andreas Werliin) and performs her own work as Mariam the Believer. Encompassing moods from heavy spiritual lament to raw gospel exclamation, Mariam’s mercurial talent, breathtaking emotional depth and experimental ambition make her one of the most exciting vocalists in Sweden.

mariamthebeliever.blogspot.co.uk