photo by Johan Bergmark

Mats Gustafsson – tenor, baritone saxophone, live electronics
Johan Berthling – electric bass
Andreas Werliin – drums and percussion

Fire! is a trio from Sweden with members from The Thing, Tape and Wildbirds and Peacedrums. In 2009 they got together to develop a fresh approach to improvised music drawing on influences from free jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise. The result is a totally uncompromising and intriguing mix of (mostly) heavy, dark and intensely burning music.

The first album, You liked me five minutes ago, was recorded in Stockholm and released on Norwegian label Rune Grammofon in 2009. In the summer of 2011 Unreleased? came out, recorded in Japan with Jim O´Rourke on electric guitar.

Later that year they toured and recorded with Australian drone master Oren Ambarchi from Sunn O))) (guitar/electronics), resulting in in the mouth – a hand (2012). Early 2016 She sleeps, she sleeps was released on Rune Grammofon, to be followed by The Hands in 2018

In 2013, the group went massive — cherry-picking 28 members from the Scandinavian jazz, improv, and avant-garde rock scenes to supplement the core trio and form the first version of Fire! Orchestra.

The wrenching beauty of veteran blower Mats Gustafsson screaming painfully through his baritone sax like Rosemary’s baby was about to pop out the other end offered a pulse-quickening sonic shock to the system, while bassist Johan Berthling laid down steady ostinato grooves as connecting tissue between Gustafsson’s possessed squalls and drummer Andreas Werliin’s steady foundation of fat beats and dizzying polyrhythms.
(Rolling Stone about Fire! at Big Ears, Knoxville TN)

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