Biography
Fire! formed as an experimental improv trio featuring saxophonist Mats Gustafsson of the Thing, bassist Johan Berthling from Tape, and drummer Andreas Werling of Wildbirds & Peacedrums. Their first recording, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, surfaced in 2009. A live collaboration with Jim O'Rourke titled Unreleased? came out in 2011, while the 2012 album In the Mouth - A Hand joined them with Oren Ambarchi. The group then assembled the 28-member Fire! Orchestra, drawing jazz, improv, and avant-rock players into a single performing and recording unit. Exit introduced the expanded ensemble in 2013; months afterward the core trio issued (Without Noticing). After the orchestra’s Enter appeared in 2014, Fire! released the widely praised She Sleep, She Sleeps in 2016 alongside the orchestra’s Ritual. The trio’s The Hands arrived in 2018, met two years later by Actions from the larger group. Fire! resurfaced with Testament in 2021.
Concert promoter Conny Lindström first conceived the project and arranged an early performance at a modest bar inside a Stockholm restaurant. The volume startled both customers and employees, yet the evening proved enjoyable for everyone present. Heartened by the response, the musicians adopted the name Fire! and reserved studio time at Tape’s facility in an industrial district of the city.
Those initial sessions fused each member’s musical history, forging links among free jazz, experimental psychedelia, post-punk, and industrial textures, dynamics, and soundscapes. The players felt no hesitation about adding overdubs or found sounds.
Soon after that debut bar show, Rune Grammofon issued You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, establishing the label as Fire!’s home. The next year a Japanese tour with Jim O'Rourke yielded the joint album Unreleased?. In 2012 the trio collaborated with Australian multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi on In the Mouth - A Hand. Subsequent travels through Europe and Asia refined a live presentation that repeatedly impressed growing audiences.
Fire! kept an additional card in reserve. During pauses from touring they gathered jazz, free-improvisation, and avant-rock musicians to record the Fire! Orchestra’s live Exit in January 2013. Two extended pieces, featuring lyrics by the Ex’s Arnold De Boer and vocals from Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg, formed the program; Gustafsson conducted the large ensemble as it surged, roared, and grooved behind the singers. Reviewers quickly likened the undertaking to large-ensemble work by Carla Bley, Keith Tippett, and Sam Rivers. That August the trio answered with (Without Noticing), a seven-track set that exposed an electronic and keyboard-driven avant-groove side of their identity.
In 2014 the Fire! Orchestra delivered Enter, a single-day studio piece divided into four tracks. Lyrics by vocalist Mariam Wallentin were performed by her, Ethiopia-born Sofia Jernberg, and Silverbullit’s Simon Ohlsson; the recording displayed a focused yet expansive dissonant jazz-rock approach built on shifting, hard-grooving rhythms and polyphonic textures.
The orchestra and trio alternated sets on shared bills while the smaller group continued routing through clubs, small theaters, and jazz festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America. Fire! reemerged in 2016 with the influential She Sleeps, She Sleeps. Striking a darker, brooding, and more hypnotic jazz stance within a twenty-first-century frame, the album drew inspiration from film-noir soundtracks. Although American critics offered measured approval, English and European writers embraced it as a refreshing directional shift.
Three months later the Fire! Orchestra released Ritual. Reduced to eighteen players, the band shaped a five-movement suite that placed Wallentin’s and Jernberg’s voices at the forefront. Captured in two days, the music fused tightly coiled riffs, incisive vamps, and free instrumental passages into concentrated expression. The trio followed in 2018 with its sixth album, The Hands, whose explosive weight and shadowy atmosphere prompted favorable comparisons to Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut.
The orchestra issued Arrival in 2019, setting new originals beside covers of Robbie Basho’s “Blue Crystal Fire” and Chic’s “At Last I Am Free,” the latter informed by Robert Wyatt’s 1981 post-punk reading. A year earlier the sixteenth Sacrum Profanum Festival in Kraków, Poland, had commissioned the Fire! Orchestra to reinterpret Krzysztof Penderecki’s sole jazz composition, Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra, first performed in 1971 by an ensemble organized by Don Cherry and directed by the composer himself. The orchestra’s expanded live version, recorded during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, appeared as Actions.
February 2021 brought Defeat, another pivot in which Gustafsson prominently featured flute and guest trumpeters Goran Kajfes and Mats Aleklint (who also supplied horn arrangements) broadened the tonal range.
After the trio’s global tour the orchestra again overhauled its membership. Drawn from five continents, the roster expanded to forty-three players for a new work premiered at the 2022 Oslo Jazz Festival. Recorded afterward at Stockholm’s Atlantis studio with guitarist Reine Fiske and American saxophonist Joe McPhee, the resulting seven-part, two-hour piece was mixed by O'Rourke and released as Echoes in April 2023.
December 2022 found Fire! at Chicago’s Electrical Audio Studios working with engineer and producer Steve Albini. Returning to fundamentals, the group discarded keyboards, electronics, flutes, and other auxiliary elements, tracking live to analog tape on the studio floor. Rune Grammofon issued the resulting album, Testament, in February 2024.
Concert promoter Conny Lindström first conceived the project and arranged an early performance at a modest bar inside a Stockholm restaurant. The volume startled both customers and employees, yet the evening proved enjoyable for everyone present. Heartened by the response, the musicians adopted the name Fire! and reserved studio time at Tape’s facility in an industrial district of the city.
Those initial sessions fused each member’s musical history, forging links among free jazz, experimental psychedelia, post-punk, and industrial textures, dynamics, and soundscapes. The players felt no hesitation about adding overdubs or found sounds.
Soon after that debut bar show, Rune Grammofon issued You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, establishing the label as Fire!’s home. The next year a Japanese tour with Jim O'Rourke yielded the joint album Unreleased?. In 2012 the trio collaborated with Australian multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi on In the Mouth - A Hand. Subsequent travels through Europe and Asia refined a live presentation that repeatedly impressed growing audiences.
Fire! kept an additional card in reserve. During pauses from touring they gathered jazz, free-improvisation, and avant-rock musicians to record the Fire! Orchestra’s live Exit in January 2013. Two extended pieces, featuring lyrics by the Ex’s Arnold De Boer and vocals from Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg, formed the program; Gustafsson conducted the large ensemble as it surged, roared, and grooved behind the singers. Reviewers quickly likened the undertaking to large-ensemble work by Carla Bley, Keith Tippett, and Sam Rivers. That August the trio answered with (Without Noticing), a seven-track set that exposed an electronic and keyboard-driven avant-groove side of their identity.
In 2014 the Fire! Orchestra delivered Enter, a single-day studio piece divided into four tracks. Lyrics by vocalist Mariam Wallentin were performed by her, Ethiopia-born Sofia Jernberg, and Silverbullit’s Simon Ohlsson; the recording displayed a focused yet expansive dissonant jazz-rock approach built on shifting, hard-grooving rhythms and polyphonic textures.
The orchestra and trio alternated sets on shared bills while the smaller group continued routing through clubs, small theaters, and jazz festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America. Fire! reemerged in 2016 with the influential She Sleeps, She Sleeps. Striking a darker, brooding, and more hypnotic jazz stance within a twenty-first-century frame, the album drew inspiration from film-noir soundtracks. Although American critics offered measured approval, English and European writers embraced it as a refreshing directional shift.
Three months later the Fire! Orchestra released Ritual. Reduced to eighteen players, the band shaped a five-movement suite that placed Wallentin’s and Jernberg’s voices at the forefront. Captured in two days, the music fused tightly coiled riffs, incisive vamps, and free instrumental passages into concentrated expression. The trio followed in 2018 with its sixth album, The Hands, whose explosive weight and shadowy atmosphere prompted favorable comparisons to Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut.
The orchestra issued Arrival in 2019, setting new originals beside covers of Robbie Basho’s “Blue Crystal Fire” and Chic’s “At Last I Am Free,” the latter informed by Robert Wyatt’s 1981 post-punk reading. A year earlier the sixteenth Sacrum Profanum Festival in Kraków, Poland, had commissioned the Fire! Orchestra to reinterpret Krzysztof Penderecki’s sole jazz composition, Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra, first performed in 1971 by an ensemble organized by Don Cherry and directed by the composer himself. The orchestra’s expanded live version, recorded during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, appeared as Actions.
February 2021 brought Defeat, another pivot in which Gustafsson prominently featured flute and guest trumpeters Goran Kajfes and Mats Aleklint (who also supplied horn arrangements) broadened the tonal range.
After the trio’s global tour the orchestra again overhauled its membership. Drawn from five continents, the roster expanded to forty-three players for a new work premiered at the 2022 Oslo Jazz Festival. Recorded afterward at Stockholm’s Atlantis studio with guitarist Reine Fiske and American saxophonist Joe McPhee, the resulting seven-part, two-hour piece was mixed by O'Rourke and released as Echoes in April 2023.
December 2022 found Fire! at Chicago’s Electrical Audio Studios working with engineer and producer Steve Albini. Returning to fundamentals, the group discarded keyboards, electronics, flutes, and other auxiliary elements, tracking live to analog tape on the studio floor. Rune Grammofon issued the resulting album, Testament, in February 2024.
Albums
Singles
