FIRE
feat. Adrian Sherwood 

Music by Ivan Bert, Gianni Denitto, Marco “Benz” Gentile, FiloQ 

Live dub, live mix – Adrian Sherwood
Marimba – Pasquale Mirra
Visuals / live cinema “Akasha” Riccardo – Franco Loiri 

Live Recording, mastering – Simone Squillario 

“FIRE represents the parable of Human beings in the ecosystem and its rapid metamorphosis, from the discovery of fire to the invention of the atomic bomb. It is an act of will and resistance of Art in a time marked by the evident and irreversible effects of the Anthropocene.”

FIRE is an art crew, a whirling clash of electronic music, dub, jazz, global beats, and visual art that provokes unmediated reflection on FIRE – a generating and destroying force we cannot master. FIRE brought on the same stage for two unique live recording sessions the dub legend and British producer Adrian Sherwood, who crafted the live mix of the performance, along with five Italian musicians: trumpet player and project creator Ivan Bert (Dark Magus Orchestra, Emma for Peace, Jazz TO Nepal), saxophonist Gianni Denitto (Zion Train, T.U.N., Kora Beat), multi-instrumentalist and producer Marco “Benz” Gentile (Africa Unite, Meg, Architorti), producer FiloQ (Italian Institute of Cumbia, Uhuru Republic, Vinicio Capossela) and vibraphonist/percussionist Pasquale Mirra (Mop Mop, C-mon Tigre) on MIDI Marimba, who is one of the most renowned musicians of the new Italian jazz scene.

On stage, the sonic flow runs simultaneously with Live Cinema images created and directed in real time by visual artist Ricky “Akasha” Franco-Loiri. The music composition process is also based on improvisation and on the interplay between the musicians and Sherwood, who manipulates sound as it takes shape, reversing the traditional live/studio practice. FIRE_Live is the crew’s debut album, recorded before a live audience on Cubo Stage at the Cubo Theater, designed and created for TJF – Torino Jazz Festival 2020. The recording is completely live and is countertrend compared with the current common audio editing and post-production practice. The work aims at faithfully documenting a moment of creative and sonic magic as well as a symbolic short-circuit.

TJF – Torino Jazz Festival 2020 commissioned trumpet player Ivan Bert to create FIRE_Live as a special project, which was presented, recorded and filmed live in Turin on October 2nd 2020.

The FIRE live, FIRE vinyl, and FIRE digital releases are produced by the FIRE Crew.

FIRE_synopsis.

“FIRE” is a reflection on fire, the most significant discovery of human beings. For the live performance, the artists draw from the enormous iconography dedicated to fire in all eras and civilizations up to the present day, which is dominated by the uncontrollable effects of technological development on a planetary scale. Modern culture is driven by fire, combustion or purification rites, which use flames in various forms to enshrine important status changes. Fire has been the basis of major revolutions such as agriculture, metallurgy, armaments, transportation, electricity, and electronics, which cannot exist without energy. Our civilization is that of FIRE, of pressure and of a consumption so extreme that it has eventually turned to nuclear fission, in a biological system originally far removed from those energies.

FIRE uses documentary audio-video materials, field recordings, scientific data and news fragments to describe our weight on the planet and the current condition of the environmental landscape attributable to anthropogenic activities.

FIRE_Live takes inspiration from the works of Godfrey Reggio, produced and supported by Francis Ford Coppola since the late 1970s, along with the film and television works of Yann Arthus Bertrand and the scientific documentaries that have warned us for decades against global warming and the new ecological scenarios we will have to face.