F-IRE Collective

F-IRE Collective is a creative music community founded by Barak Schmool in London. The Collective also has a record label.

F-IRE (Fellowship for Integrated Rhythmic Expression) was named later in 1998 and came to encompass a community of artists whose outlook stretched beyond 'music alone'. Dance, poetry, film and other modes of creative expression were as much a part of their artistic conception as the sound they produced. F-IRE members attempt to cultivate their own directions and transcend categorical boundaries, circus or electronica, free improvisation or classical composition.

F-IRE began as a workshop in 1995 in which a group of young musicians met to learn West African dance music, its theory and methods of communication. They applied these techniques to their own compositional and improvisational languages. Timeline was one of the first bands to arise from this workshop.

Barak Schmool, bandleader of Timeline, was a member of Django Bates' Delightful Precipice and had grown up musically inside Loose Tubes. As a teacher at City University and Royal Academy of Music, it was his experimental pro-community bands Akwaaba drum orchestra, Méta Méta and Rhythms of the City that were part of the attractive force that pulled people together to form F-IRE.

Those joining him in these initial creative explorations included Eska Mtungwazi, Robert Mitchell, Tom Skinner, Iian Pattinson, Nick Ramm, Tom Herbert, Leo Taylor and Dave Okumu. Others were drawn to F-IRE for a variety of reasons; Ingrid Laubrock, Ben Davis and Jonny Phillips through their interest in studying African rhythms; Maurizio Ravalico and Finn Peters through their involvement in the Afro-Cuban music of Méta Méta; Pete Wareham and Seb Rochford through their connection with Tom Herbert; Justin Quinn, Tom Arthurs and Jonathan Bratoeff through their involvement with F-IRE jazz workshops led by Stéphane Payen and Julia Biel through her songwriting partnership with Jonny Phillips.

...
Wikipedia