If your idea of free jazz doesn’t extend much beyond the unfettered freakouts of Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders, Ornette Coleman, and Germany’s Peter Brötzmann, and if said free jazz is a bit too, er, chaotic for your tastes, have I got a hot tip for you. It’s some real insider dope and I know it’s good because it comes straight from my brother, who knows more about jazz than Jesus. Yes, that Jesus. The hippie in the sandals who gave us Peace, Love & John Coltrane.
The hot tip is the band Fire!—yes, with the exclamation point—and they’re the brainchild of Swedish baritone/tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, who has released well over forty albums as a band leader since 1991 and has collaborated with just about everybody but Art Garfunkel. He’s joined forces with scads of jazz guys, of course, including the aforementioned Peter Brötzmann, but he’s also played with the avant rock likes of Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs, Ken Vandermark, Sweden’s The Ex, and Sonic Youth (as well as members thereof).
Since 2011 he’s released numerous albums as leader of either Fire! or Fire! Orchestra, but the album that really caught my attention is 2018’s The Hands. It’s as primal as your most barbaric free jazz, but here’s the difference: Gustafsson tends to play his skronk inside of tight little rhythmic boxes, boxes of insidious simplicity constructed by drummer Andreas Werliin (who’s also credited with “feedback”) and electric bassist/double bassist Johan Berthling.
Both men lean towards playing controlled and generally unvaryingly simple patterns, and the effect gives the songs remorseless grind appeal. As a result, the songs on The Hands are anything but chaotic. Gustafsson’s playing (most of which he does on the baritone sax) is freak-out free, but he’s a bird in a cage, and the “lightning in a bottle” effect is never less than enthralling.
The Hands has a spartan feel, but it’s anything but a quiet affair—like your best rock albums, it should be played at maximum volume. Werliin and Berthling may be exemplars of restraint, of downright Shaker simplicity in fact, but they’re playing to be heard from Sweden. If the reverberations of the bass and drums aren’t slowly walking your treasured bobble-headed Kiss figurines (there goes Ace Frehley!) off your knick-knack shelf, you’re not playing the album at its recommended volume. You should be aiming for deaf and destruction.
The title cut is a monster—the rhythm section establishes an unvarying throb, and Gustafsson lays his saxophone on top of it. Basically what you’re getting is one gigantic riff, like something you might hear from, say, Morphine, but it just keeps repeating itself, like the Fall’s “Blindness” only (believe it or not) simpler. There’s feedback in there, too, and Werliin isn’t exactly shy when it comes to thrashing the cymbals, but mostly what you hear is Gustafsson working himself up into a squealing fervor. It’s orderly enough for your most anal-retentive soul—such people love boxes—but wild enough for your most wild-eyed free jazz junky.
Follow-up “When Her Lips Collapsed” opens with some indecipherable chatter, then the rhythm section kicks in at an earthmover pace while Gustafsson proceeds to produce lots of heavy duty blurt mixed in with some nifty st-st-stuttering and some really deep-pitched squeals. This one is the jazz equivalent of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”—it has that same inexorable erosive grind that will cause you to abandon breakfast on the table and make for higher ground.
“Touches Me with the Tips of Wonder” opens with Gustafsson working his quiet way around the sax, while Werliin does the same on the drum kit. Why, he’s so reticent and reflective you’ll jump when he finally hits a cymbal. No box on this number—it’s a slow-motion exploration of space, breath, and sorrow that ends with a woman speaking God knows what language.
Werliin opens “Washing Your Heart in Filth” with some busy percussion, then in comes the bass keeping things fast but simple until Gustafsson enters stage left blowing phrases, first short phrases, then longer ones, on what sounds to me like a tenor sax, and this is as free as free gets, and kinda negates everything I said above. Challenging? Yes. Especially when Gustafsson begins to play in circles, repeating his blurt in what seems like an attempt to blow his way into a locked room. But between Werliin’s percussion, that punchy bass line, and Gustafsson’s blowing you’ll dig it, unless you’re a highly strung individual, in which case I recommend you skip this one for sanity’s sake.
“Up and Down” opens with lots of drum pound and a bass figure so big and monstrous it would give Godzilla conniptions. Then in comes Gustafsson playing just as big—he plays these long lines before commencing to squeal, blurt, honk, and in general make it known that when the going gets weird the weird make a titanic noise before the song ends in a wall of feedback and what sounds like some dialogue from a Swedish horror movie about giant trolls.
Next song, “To Shave the Leaves. In Red. In Black.” same thing. You get an unvarying eight, count ‘em eight, note bass figure that anybody could play, but turn the volume high enough and houses on the next block will collapse. Werliin isn’t doing anything you need to attend the Juilliard School to play either. Meanwhile Gustafsson sounds down in the dumps; he’s just blowing away before playing this great stutter step and then doing a dead perfect imitation of an outraged dinosaur warning you to back off. It’s all rather pre-historical, like these guys just climbed out of the primordial ooze and are really hungry and are marching slowly towards the nearest Burger King to be fed.
Closer “I Guard Her to Rest. Declaring Silence.” opens with Gustafsson playing it very low key and traditional all by his lonesome on what sounds to me like the tenor sax, before the rhythm section comes in playing things very easy-peasy. This one wouldn’t offend the olfactory sensibilities of even your most staid Stan Getz fan, although said fan might sneer at it and write the band off as amateurs because they’re keeping everything as simple as a game of dominos. It’s all about the night, this one, and the subtle sound Gustafsson’s squeezing out of his horn as opposed to the notes, if that makes any sense. It’s a wonderfully low key closer to one very loud album, and it works.
Fire! is what Black Sabbath might have sounded like had Ozzy Osbourne decided to snort saxophones instead of fire ants–this is mutant machine metal for mad jazzbos who hate metal’s guts, and Black Sabbath’s for damn sure. Fire! does this Gargantuan Stomp that puts “Iron Man” to shame, “Godzilla” and Led Zep too, while Gustafsson, trapped in the belly of the beast, deals with his Stockholm syndrome by doing the Gothenburg Skronk. Recommended to listeners who like order in their disorder, and vice versa.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
