This Swedish trio follow free jazz’s concept of sometimes feral discord designed to touch jazz’s raw roots, sometimes reaching right back to New Orleans. Fire! Orchestra albums can meanwhile use upwards of two-dozen musicians, scaling complex heights. This eighth trio album is conversely the first stripped to just baritone sax, bass and drums, sans additional instruments, electronics or guests, played live to analogue tape in the spartan Chicago crucible of Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio, where the producer transparently documents musicians.

‘Four Ways of Dealing with One Way’ demonstrates Fire!’s frequent roles, drummer Andreas Werliin pawing with tense, banked power, bassist Johan Berthling providing subliminal stability and tonal colour, while saxophonist Mats Gustafsson goes his own melancholy way, brooding down vacant back-streets but getting nowhere. He ends stalking through a Werliin storm that doesn’t break. In Fire! terms, this is a ballad.

‘Work Song for a Scattered Past’ starts with an unwavering bass phrase, Albini catching the strings’ sound, before Werliin’s pummelling, martial clamour meets Gustafsson’s indignant, wounded cries. ‘The Dark Inside of Cabbage’ maintains a heartbeat groove beneath the sax’s harrying forays, ‘Running Bison. Breathing Entity. Sleeping Reality’ a more meditative mood. The closing ‘One Testament. One Aim. One More to Go. Again’ starts with Gustafsson’s huffed breaths and rude rasps, slipping into soothing, reflectively long melodic lines, as if emotionally evolving in real time. A violent Werliin clamour subsides, then the saxophonist enters a hushed nirvana near-gospel in its sated acceptance, sounding both exhausted and spiritually elevated.

Fire!’s emotional interplay survives Testament’s unadorned landscape, maintaining much of their usual variety. As usual with Albini, this is what happened – less than often before, but showing the band’s philosophy of groove-rooted experiment can be self-sustaining.