reviews
"On
possibly the wettest day of the year, Liverpool's Solar Fire Trio
landed in Brighton to give this city some serious free skronk and
clatter. Despite the problem of the venue being double booked and
getting drenched looking for a place to have a drink before returning
to sit through an eternity of appalling electro racket band meaninglessly
strutting and fretting upon the stage, Solar Fire Trio finally took
up the reigns 3 hours later than anticipated. Some bands would have
given up by this point, Brighton being notorious for staying in
when it's raining, but despite a scarcity of bodies they immediately
began to entrance those in attendance with this maelstrom of music.
Imagine Mats Gustafsson, John Zorn and that giant drummer out of
Faust being friends and making intuitive music together with the
all-important rock'n'roll heart and you're getting some way towards
Solar Fire Trio. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Very nice slab here from Liverpool’s Solar Fire Trio. Formed in ’05 by Spiritualized saxophonist, Ray Dickaty, alto player Dave Jackson and drummer, Steve Belger, their eponymous debut LP is classic squee-pileage in the post-ESP tradition. Unlike some Euro players, these three base their sound on loose sonic collisions and interwoven blather in ripely extended fire-form, all revolving around theories of meat and its ability to burn. Solid, savage blurt. - Byron Coley/Thurston Moore - Arthur Magazine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Normally a visit to Liverpool in the UK ought to result in the acquisition of memorabilia related to the good old Fab Four, not a lengthy rampage of free jazz that sounds like something that might have been pressed up on pockmarked vinyl by the French BYG label in the '70s. This LP featuring two trio jams of more than 20 minutes each was recorded at a Liverpool venue in 2006. Tenor and alto saxophonists Ray Dickaty and Dave Jackson created these pieces from thin air, possibly in order to keep the highly energetic drummer Steve Belger from chewing up all the new waterfront construction projects and fabricating drumsticks from the pieces caught in between his teeth. Seizing on one repeated pitch and hammering it out in unison is something of a pedestrian move, yet at more pleasing intervals the hornmen concoct a syncopated theme in the style of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, framed in such a way that the drummer must think he has been titled at an angle, not that such a move would ever slow down this guy." - Eugene Chadbourne - All Music Guide "What
possible happening in a British pub could be more lethal to the
mind than, say, getting trapped in front of a live dartboard or
imbibing pitchers of warm dark beer? This CD presents one possibility
indeed, coming upon a free jazz group whose selections in this case
need not titles, are identified solely from their running times.
These are clearly defined events of metaphysical, metabolic, spiritual
and psychotronic intercourse in which squealing horns and pounding
drums are the key communication skills. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over in the
SALFORD ARMS the bar staff have a long suffering look that even
the most musically open minded would be forgiven; god only knows
what GOLDEN LAB have thrown at them in the meantime but right now
THE SOLAR FIRE TRIO are bombarding their eardrums with some unearthly
and impenetrable hybrid of free jazz and primal noise. Julian Cope
thinks they're fantastic, apparently; but even the wristbanded section
of the pub's clientele is divided. ManchesterMusic's founders are
cowering at the back visibly shuddering, and to the uninitiated
(which we very much are) it does indeed sound a bit like the result
of administering electric shocks to a room full of assorted wildlife.
Seconds later Gareth from Stranger Son Of WB, a man not unacquainted
with wrestling ear-melting sounds out of a saxophone, describes
them as "really, really good; they really know what they're
doing, playing off each other like that". Each to their own,
I suppose. for photos &
even more sarky comments about our Sounds From The Other City performance
- http://blog.myspace.com/ruthallan "Solar
Fire Trio are a free improv trio whose influences are as much jazz
as they are heavy rock. Tonight they played a blinding 42 minute
Ornette meets Iggy set consisting of no breaks.. With two saxes
and drums one may imagine there's not a lot that could be done beyond
the obvious but you'd be wrong as in fact this was a set that demonstrated
huge potential and a vast range of influences and flavours. Although
not easy listening for the mixed crowd of freenoisers and young
rockers, those that braved out the first few minutes were rewarded
by an extremely thorough set that was as much cerebral as it was
physical, as much chaotic, fiery intensity as it was lyrical and
as much unpredictable as it was utterly digestable. Improv in its
finest form, these men are masters of their trade; their strength
as individuals equally contributing to the power and focus of the
overall synergy that seemed at times to be extremely well rehearsed
rather than the slick interplay and communication that it was. You
had to be there. Catch SFT live if you can, if you fancy something
a bit different. Fans of punk, hard rock, free jazz and even harsh
noise will not be disappointed. Check out the video for a taster.
Top stuff. " - Freenoise "I
have died. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Acción Caliente Del Jazz! Julian Cope,
a man of impeccable musical (if not sartorial) taste, has chosen
as his album of the month Solar Fire Trio 's eponymous LP on Invada
Records. Two sides of serious fucking shitkicking sax/sax/drums
heads down freeblurt that roars out of the speakers like some long-forgotten
ESP-Disk trio who've mainlined that same vein of fuck-off that fuelled
the Blue Cheer of Come And Get It/Just A Little Bit. God it's good. drwommm.blogspot From the off let’s get one thing straight… Solar Fire Trio is not jazz. Forget about the sax/sax/drums line up, these mung worshippers ain’t even jazz the way smacky James Chance conceived of it neither. Solar Fire Trio is rock’n’roll, brutal North African tribal rock’n’roll in its most singular form (they should have a naked lead singer/dancer at the front who utters not one word). The Solar Fire Trio is R&B at its most devolved and freeform, running the voodoo down down and evermore down. The Solar Fire Trio is devolved and dissolved Detroit soul, hard, gleaming, polished as the shiny bell ends of their righteous horns. Solar Fire Trio is a power trio not in the ‘So Jazz’ Cream mould but in the ‘So What’ Musica Transonic mould. This is “Religion, Brutality & A Dance Beat” as my erstwhile mentor and former manager of Liverpool’s Eric’s Club Roger Eagle used to call it. Yeah, Liverpool. Solar Fire Trio is comprised of three Liverpudlians with a biker rock attitude to free jazz, or is that a free jazz attitude to biker rock? Come to think of it, this music probably owes more to the behemoth soul of Grand Funk Railroad than it does even to John Coltrane’s superhuman cacophony. Is The Solar Fire Trio playing a medley of classic soul and R&B on this LP? It certainly sounds that way. As though each player were wearing headphones connected to the same communal iPod, Solar Fire Trio plays together as though united by some deeply ingrained inner soundtrack that only they can hear. Imagine early Blue Cheer jamming along with Eddie Floyd’s ‘Big Bird’ as their inner road map, so they could all hear where each other was at, but the audience would remain None The Wiser. Indeed, with regard to free jazz, only John Coltrane around ’67 is in any way as brutally wanton as these jackbooted thugs. Besides, this Solar Fire Trio stuff seems to be as much informed by the tumultuous Mars/Friction side of No Wave and Post Punk as it does by jazz. Indeed, like the legendary Klondike & York album THE HOLY BIBLE, the only jazz elements here are the instruments. But who are
these madmen who kick the bejayzuz out of jazz? Well, they ain’t
completely unprovenaced, brothers’n’sisters. For starters,
it’s Ray Dickaty AKA Ray Moonshake AKA Ray Spiritualized who
nails that tenor sax, soul riffing like there’s an entire
section there, occupying the midrange and baritones, as alto saxophonist
Dave Jackson free-squeeks the alto sax into Patty Waters/Yoko Ono’s
attic, these two Jack Horners barely kept in check by drummer Steve
Belger, who lays down the kind of bassless soul rhythms that only
thee most confident drummers dare to do. Belger is to Solar Fire
Trio what Guy Evans was to the nihilistic soul of GODBLUFF-period
Van Der Graaf Generator, or what Tony Williams was to his own bassless
power trio Lifetime. If Solar Fire Trio were true jazz not punk,
there’d be some redundant ever-descending ber-doom-doom-doom-doom
upright bass plunking away in the background, but these gentlemen
know a big ass double bass would add nothing to the yawp PLUS it
would stop them from roaring up and down the country in their old
beat up silver Mercedes estate earning the dollar. So instead, Ray
Dickaty often takes on the role of the entire horn section single-handed,
blowing with such a supreme rock confidence that Dave Jackson’s
alto sax is allowed to soar off into Van Halenish stratospherics
like Gerd Dudek on the title track of The Wolfgang Dauner Septet’s
FREE ACTION. Yup, like over opinionated Jewish fundamentalists at
a circumcision rite, Messrs. Dickaty. Jackson and Belger have pruned
it all back to the basics, not only removing the piano and all of
the landmarks that such a chordal instrument brings, but also removing
all other musical rafts that could possibly give listeners something/anything
to hang on to as the stormy seas rage around them. As I previously
mentioned, it all sounds like these guys been listening to ’67
John Coltrane septet stuff through a broken Dansette with only treble
and one speaker working. These stoned motherfuckers done fucked
off McCoy Tyner’s piano, Joe Brazil’s flute, both bass
players, and reduced the rest to a heady and distilled broth of
just Pharoah Sanders’ tenor sax, Elvin Jones’ drums
and Coltrane’s own tenor. Under a stairwell on a connecting
floor somewhere between the attic where The Stooges recorded the
17-minute version of ‘LA Blues’ and the smoky basement
jazz club in which Albert Ayler performed the Plastic People Of
The Universe-like ‘Holy Ghost’… that’s where
Solar Fire Trio currently dwell. Too rock to attract be-beret’d
Little Miss Heartbreaker/Homemaker types and too jazz to court the
Living Rock Goddess. For our purposes, brothers’n’sisters,
that’s just where we need them to stay – well hung at
dawn, betwixt and between, forever standing at the tuning fork in
the road, three open toads horny for the horn. Note: For those
of you on an electric trip, this Album Of The Month may come as
a shock simply because its proto-metal is played on acoustic instruments.
For those of you on an acoustic trip, its blurt may be anathema
simply because of this band’s sheer unsignpostedness. But
approach this record as a head clearer and watch the demons rise
up out of your skull and clear off post haste, as The Solar Fire
Trio first mush your branium, then dynorod it with a transcendental
floss. |
Back
over at GOLDEN LAB’s extravaganza at the SALFORD ARMS, is
perhaps the most frightening prospect of the whole weekend –
the SOLAR FIRE TRIO are plainly two wild, granted talented and clever,
saxophonists who rigidly compose their free jazz to live rock drums.
The end result is something akin to Lol Coxhill blended with amphetamised
spaced out acid jazz for people who love the sound of strangulated
squeals. It’s certainly different but I become progressively
worried about a couple of young dudes at the front who seemed ensnared
in the beat and who began nodding their head as though it were the
sound of Karma itself. It wasn’t – it was like an air
raid siren going off inside a space helmet. Punk rock for the Acker
Bilk generation.