Where to start? Normally, I can get the feel of an album after the first hearing. With ‘Echoes’, I get the sense that I could listen dozens of times and still find something new, exciting and bewildering. The range and scope is quite extraordinary.
It is a two hour work of truly epic proportions. A triple album with fourteen tracks of mind expanding sounds that fuse together cosmic rock, free jazz, soul, noise, ambient worldbeat and contemporary classical.
This magical fusion flows like a marvellously meandering river transporting a huge orchestra of 43, mostly Scandinavian, journeymen and women.
Starting out with the working title Big Bang, it was premiered at Stockholm Jazz Festival in October 2022.
According to the website of Fire!, the band ”formed in 2009 to develop a fresh approach to improvised music drawing on influences from free jazz, psychedelic rock and noise.” While the scale of this project has now expanded considerably, the main rhythm section remains that of founder members Johan Berthling (bass) and Andreas Werliin(drums).
Berthling and Werliin provide the grooves for the vast cast of hand-picked musicians to build upon under the guiding eyes and ears of Mats Gustafsson. The core elements are the seven self-titled parts, each with running times of between 10 and 15 minutes. These are interspersed with seven shorter pieces.
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The album was recorded at the Atlantis studio in Stockholm and mixed by Jim O´Rourke in Japan over the course of two months.
Highlights include ECHOES:To gather it all. Once. with sultry vocals from Mariam Wallentin and ECHOES:Lost eyes in dying hand which was composed by David Sandström and begins and concludes with a maelstrom of wild abstract noise.
It closes in whimsical fashion with I see your eye, part 2 featuring Joe McPhee on tenor sax and playful vocals playing tribute to an unnamed musical hero who was “the last of the late, great finger wigglers.”
This album contains multitudes. Prepare to be astounded.
Fire! website
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