Time Is Fire (Photo by Farrah Skeiky)
DC psych rockers Time Is Fire plans to release the band’s debut LP, In Pieces, this Friday. On the day prior to that, the quintet performs in an album release show at DC9 on Thursday, Feb. 27.
Time Is Fire barrels into the musical future on their new album, In Pieces, a blistering mix of pan-cultural rhythms, experimental noise, and consciousness-raising protest.
The debut LP (out Feb. 28 on Electric Cowbell/ Insect Fields) captures the band’s signature sound, which has been described as “Sufi punk,” “weird world,” and “punk mysticism,” but resists simplistic labels. Produced and recorded by Brendan Canty (Rites of Spring, Fugazi, Messthetics), the album’s nine tracks build on Time Is Fire’s incendiary live shows, which have won praise from critics at NPR, the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and many other media outlets.
Beneath the record’s polyrhythmic beats and psychedelia is a potent message of resistance against authoritarian forces on the rise across the globe, from Tehran to DC.
“Our mission as a band is to snap people out of their fear,” says Kamyar Arsani, the band’s Iranian-born vocalist and lyricist. “The dance element is there to get people out of their seats and moving. And then the lyrics point toward new ways of thinking, feeling and changing our world.”
Just days ago, Time Is Fire released a video for the single “Poor Is Poor.”
Watch the official music video for “Poor Is Poor” by Time Is Fire on YouTube:
Born in Tehran, Arsani grew up studying classical Persian music while listening to Western rock, which, as he told the Washington Post, “had the same protest energy that I heard on the streets.”
Arsani left Iran during the country’s thwarted Green Revolution, settling in DC, where a spontaneous jam session sparked a new collaboration with guitarist Matt Perrone and drummer Jim Thomson (GWAR, Alter Natives, Bio Ritmo), one of the city’s leading presenters of Latin, African, and Middle Eastern music. The band’s latest lineup features the guitar pyrotechnics of Jeff Barsky (Insect Factory, Mock Identity) and bassist Kai Filipczak. Their collective, improvisational songwriting draws from several lifetimes of playing across punk, experimental, dance and international styles.
Listen to the singles to date or preorder In Pieces by Time Is Fire on Bandcamp:
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=880507032 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
While it’s great to listen to Time Is Fire, you’re not getting the full picture unless you catch these electrifying poets live. See them next at their album release show at DC9 on Feb. 27!
Time Is Fire
w/ Bahloul, Quattracenta
DC9
Thursday, Feb. 27
Doors @ 7:30pm
$10/$12
All ages