One thing ILM has made me realize is how much of an albumist I am at heart. Yes I know - "albumist" it sounds too much like "rockist" doesn't it? (and rockist is a word I am loathe to use) But I simply think in terms of albums. These big chunks of artistic statement that our modern technological age seems to have decided are unwieldy. They are a collection of songs of a common time and place, the same producer, etc.. There is a message to be communicated with an album that can't be communicated if the songs are separated from each other. There is a certain art to the album. Good albums can be a journey with many equally worthy but different twists and turns or they can be a seamless collection of well-crafted, similar (sounding) songs. They can also be somewhere in between.
Fire Dances is one of those curious creatures in between.
I heard this album again today for the first time since - I'm going to guess - 1987, certainly not since then - and it amazes me just how long ago that was, actually, but never mind.
I was in the car today and although everything started out very innocently and normally (I wouldn't say the first track was one of the BETTER ones, after all, not that there's anything wrong with it), before long I discovered that I did not feel like I inhabited the same reality anymore that existed before I put the CD on. I remembered the songs...I wouldn't have said they were totally unfamiliar to me. But it was a very strange, vague remembrance.
The way I recall this album was that when I first bought it on vinyl the songs seemed very samey to me, until I played it a few more times and got to know it a little (nearly all truly great albums have this effect on me, I find) and then it seemed to put strange, barbed hooks in my brain. It definitely did (and still does) something far more interesting and exciting for me than either of the first two KJ albums for example.
Two years ago, when I bought those three compilations Laugh, Wilful Days & Unperverted Pantomime, I couldn't help but notice the unbelievable LACK of any track from Fire Dances on any of those compilations! And that bothered me. But soon I was on to some other music and it passed me by.
I'm really not sure that even at the time I fully appreciated the joys of this album. There were only about 7 million fascinating CURRENT things going on musically in 1987, the British indie scene was a mighty force to be reckoned with, there was a lot more competition than there is now, for me. Who knows what might have ultimately distracted me from Fire Dances? Might have even been Brighter Than A Thousand Suns! But - who cares.
For Fire Dances is indeed just what I hoped it might be: the missing link in their career just before the masterpiece of Night Time.
The point I'm trying to make is when I put the CD on today, the level of enjoyment I expected to get out of it was really nowhere near the amount I in fact, got. And I was just on my way to school from work in the car, very busy, very tired, a very very busy tired week. I mean even if the album disappointed me or left me bored I was just plain too tired to care. But instead it surprised me.
Too many songs here to mention specifically just yet but on first listen, Harlequin sounded especially compelling. Of course I had to get out of the car before I could finish the album. I'm still working on getting to know it better. I will say that Dominator brought me great, almost guilty-pleasure joy when I eventually did get to it because "oh god, ha! they're trying a DISCO beat out! Killing Joke tries DANCE music! YEAH! Did they pick up a synthesizer, or did they just make me THINK they did?" I mean not that I think it's really one of the STRONGER tracks on the album, might not be fair to say that, but what exquisite fun!
And that was just how Fire Dances hit me in a nutshell:
"What exquisite fun!!"
― Bimble... (Bimble...), Friday, 18 February 2005 07:43 (twenty-one years ago)
I sat down with drummer Big Paul Ferguson this past September to interview him for a book commemorating Killing Joke's 25th Anniversary. Along the way, I asked him what his
least favorite Killing Joke record was and he cited this album. Incredulous (it's my certainly one of my favorites), I asked him why. His answer:
"It felt a bit jokey to me, pardon the pun. It felt a bit too humorous, and we were all doing massive amounts of certain substances, so the mixing was a bit tinny. ::::laughs:::::"
Regardless, it's a CLASSIC, of course. My only critiscism of it concerns the sleeve....simply not their finest.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 18 February 2005 08:10 (twenty-one years ago)
I don't think
Fire Dances is their best but FAR from their worst. Anything which has "Let's All Go (To The Fire Dances)" can't be KJ's worst, as that's one of their finest singles, or potentially greatest singles if it wasn't released as one.
My only complaint about it is that it all kinda likes a more frenetic Adam And The Ants album.. lots of that Burundi drum action... which can be seen as a good thing since 1983 was hardly Adam Ant's finest year (Strip?)/ Though the non-album singles like "Me or You?" I thought were better than anything off Fire Dances.
Revelations has always seemed like the odd duck of the early catalogue for me.. I LIKE Revelations, but it's certainly has their weirdest songs.. and weirdest production. (Looking now, recorded by Killing Joke and Conny Plank(!)) There are no lineup mentions on the album, so I had no idea Youth was still on this record. I thought What's THIS For.. was his last album with the Joke.
(Course, nothing that can touch What's THIS For... or the first album.)
― donut debonair (donut), Friday, 18 February 2005 21:50 (twenty-one years ago)