The sheer scale of the new Fire! Orchestra recording automatically evokes memories of Keith Tippett’s monster big band Centipede and its debut double LP Septober Energy (RCA Neon, 1971). Whilst that huge ensemble, mostly leading lights in the UK jazz scene, comprised 50 players, Echoes has a slightly smaller cast of 43 musicians, but the instrumental disbursement is roughly equivalent, utilising horns, reeds, a rhythm section including two keyboardists, four vocalists and a string section.
This sixth Fire! Orchestra album is a follow-up to Actions (Rune Grammofon, 2020) which was based on the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s seminal LP Actions (Philips, 1971) featuring Don Cherry.
The orchestra is led by the founder members – reedsman and conductor Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin – who between them wrote most of the compositions. The three musicians also constitute the nucleus of a band which in its smallest incarnation comprises a trio that released its debut over a dozen years ago as the micro entity Fire! with You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago (Rune Grammofon, 2009).
Echoes, under its working title Big Bang, was given its debut performance at the Stockholm Jazz Festival in October 2022 where it received an ecstatic reception from the audience. The work is spread over seven major sections, each lasting at least 10 minutes and is interspersed with seven additional shorter pieces. The often tentative music is addictively gripping – witness Johan Berthling’s hypnotic ostinato bass line on the opener Echoes: I See Your Eye Part 1 or the eerie, often startling electronic soundscapes of Echoes: Lost Eyes In Dying Hand.
The similarity with Tippett’s Centipede is noticeable in Echoes: Cala Boca Menino where the ensemble voices sing over a repeated motif played by the orchestra. On the final track Echoes: I See Your Eye, Part 2, the American saxophonist Joe McPhee delivers an extraordinary vocal tour de force in a humorous recitative style recalling the spoken-word elements of some of Frank Zappa’s songs.
The album was mixed over a period of two months between October and November 2022 by improv guitarist Jim O’Rourke late of Sonic Youth and with whom the Fire! trio have previously recorded two albums, Released (Rune Grammofon, 2011) and Unreleased (Rune Grammofon, 2011).
Weighing in at two hours in length on double CD or triple vinyl, Echoes never palls and constantly delights, unveiling with repeated plays hidden and not so hidden depths.
Discography
CD1: Echoes: I See Your Eye Part 1; Echoes: Forest Without Shadows; Echoes: To Gather It All. Once; Sliding Whisper Of Pain; Echoes: Lost Eyes In Dying Hand; Welcoming You; Drinking Your Dream (59.05)
CD2: Echoes: A Lost Farewell; Nothing Astray All Falling; In Those Veins A Silvernet; Echoes: Cala Boca Menino; Double Loneliness; Respirations; Not Yet Born The Blind Courage Of Life; Echoes: I See Your Eye Part 2 (51.12)
Mats Gustafsson (cond, bar, f); Johan Berthling (b, elb); Andreas Werliin (d) and others. Stockholm, 23-25 March 2022.
Rune Grammofon RCD2231
