Fire! with Jim O’Rourke – Unreleased?
With a release from Mats Gustafsson together Jim O’Rourke playing side by side, I was expecting a sonic tour de force free jazz ride through the whole frequency spectrum. But “Unreleased?” offers something different than just simple sonic freakouts.
The opener is a dark brooding track: Saxophones wailing in the foreground, while drums and bass move slowly with their monotonous pulsing backbeat patterns. Circulating around themselves the elements add more and more tension culminating in a short outburst that unfortunately still sounds a little too tamed.
The rhythm section seems to play a large part in “Unreleased?”. Wherever the tracks are heading it seems that the underlying bass pulse never stops for a minute thus giving the four tracks a driving and in a way somewhat violent, demanding note. Strangely enough, at the same time the bass adds a soothing, calming tone in the ocean of swirling saxophone cascades and electronic noises. So it is not that much of a surprise that the second piece “…Please, I am released” ventures into similar territories. Waves of saxophone patterns, distant synth chords and electronic noises clash against the solid backing of the rhythm section. Similar to the first track, the piece feels a little too mellow and nice, although it offers some dissonant elements here and there.
Track three is a different story: Off-kilter rhythms and electronic noises built the foundation for the album’s shortest piece. Tiny noises flicker around a faltering rhythmic pulse that continuously contracts and expands.
Fire!’s “Unreleased?” is a lot less noisy and harsh as one might expect in the beginning. It feels like everyone involved restrained a little to give those four tracks more room to breath and move. Only the last piece with its longer noise passages releases a little of the tension that was built up throughout the album before dissolving into dissonant patterns and sound fragments only bound by the ever pulsing bass. This last fourth track, with its twists and turns, is absolutely fantastic. I wonder how this record would have been, if this path would have been explored a little more deeply.
Nevertheless, Fire! together with Jim O’Rourke is a really solid, at times noisy and dissonant jazz piece. This is definitively not the re-invention of the wheel or the genre, but an exciting and great ride through joyful sonic landscapes that just could have been a little more wild in the end.
