Fire!: Testament

Recorded and then played back at reduced speed, even a seemingly simple two-note bird call reveals elaborate complexity and detail. It is worth hanging on to that thought when approaching the deceptively straightforward Testament. On a cursory listening, most of the album—an amalgam of Mats Gustafsson's slow-and-deliberate long-held low-end baritone notes and Johan Berthling and Andreas Werlin's matching bass ostinatos and drum patterns—sounds primordial.

The recipe goes reductio ad absurdum on track two, "The Dark Inside Of A Cabbage," which is so simple it might be comical were it not for the tension produced by Berthling and Werlin anticipating rather than riding the beat. Track one, "Work Song For A Scattered Past" (check the YouTube below), and track four, "Running Bison Breathing Entity Sleeping Reality," are nearly as fundamental, with grooves big enough in which to hide the Rocky Mountains. Track three, "Four Ways Of Dealing With One Way," mixes it up a bit, and track four, "One Testament One Aim One More To Go Again," ultimately wraps the album up with softly spoken lyricism.

Listened to attentively, Testament offers a more filigreed picture. It is not that Gustafsson's playing contains the multiple grace-notes and assorted filigrees of slow-mo bird song, it is more that one is aware of those possibilities. It is as though complexity is present just off-stage, waiting to be ushered on by the listener.

Testament is the first Fire! album to be stripped down to the bare-bones trio; there are no overdubs, no flutes, no electronics, no guests and no extras, and the whole thing was recorded live in the studio (by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago) to analogue tape. The approach suits the group well, just as it has on occasion fitted London's not-dissimilar tenor saxophone and drums duo Binker and Moses. Since 2009, Fire! has been matching the expressionist energy of out-there jazz with house-rocking grooves and the spell remains potent.