Nik Bartsch Ronin

"Llyria" is the third album from Nik Bärtsch's Ronin and follows on from 'Stoa' and 'Holon', the ECM recordings that established the exciting young Swiss band on the international scene. Leader and pianist Nik Bärtsch's "modular" pieces still define the context of the group's music but the committed input of the individual Ronin members has lifted the work to the next level, blurring the distinctions between composition, improvisation and interpretation.

Ronin around the world: a powerful and atmospheric concert recording with music captured in Germany, Austria, Holland, England, and Japan, a double-album which transmits the live impact of Nik Bärtsch’s band and its enveloping modular groove music of interlocking rhythms. It’s also a set that marks the end of an era and the transition into a new one. These are the last recordings of Ronin with Björn Meyer’s elegantly-leaping bass guitar as one of the lead voices, and Bärtsch views the album as partly a tribute to Meyer’s long tenure with the band. New bassist Thomy Jordi, meanwhile, makes an impressive entrance on “Modul 55”, but it’s most often the whole band, as a unified field of force, that commands the listener’s attention.

A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist best known as leader of the bands Ronin and Mobile, Entendre offers deeper insight into Nik Bärtch's musical thinking.As the album title implies Entendre is about hearing as a creative process, referencing the patient unfolding of Bärtch's modular polymetric pieces, with alertness to the dynamics of touch, finding freedom in aesthetic restriction, serving the flow of each piece's development while also taking the music to new places. Recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, in September 2020, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist best known as leader of the bands Ronin and Mobile, Entendre offers deeper insight into Nik Bärtch's musical thinking.As the album title implies Entendre is about hearing as a creative process, referencing the patient unfolding of Bärtch's modular polymetric pieces, with alertness to the dynamics of touch, finding freedom in aesthetic restriction, serving the flow of each piece's development while also taking the music to new places. Recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, in September 2020, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Not everyone will love this music. It's not jazz, it doesn't exactly swing, and it may be too in-your-face for those who prefer more delicate realms of introspection. People who hate the minimalisms of Reich and Philip Glass may find Bartsch's compositions repetitive. But anyone who is interested in muscular new sounds that seem both timeless and very contemporary should check it out.

Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Holon (2008) {ECM 2049}
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© 2008 ECM Records | ECM 2049
Jazz / Modern Creative / Mystical Minimalism / Post Minimalism / Piano

Pianist Nik Bärtsch's Zurich quintet Ronin has released a handful of recordings, but Holon is only the second released in the United States. When Stoa was issued in 2006, it was like this startling blast of air. Was it jazz? Was it minimalist classical music? Was it acoustic techno? Bärtsch calls it "zen funk." OK, fair enough, but in actuality, while it bears traces and borrows elements from all of the aforementioned genres, Ronin is its own animal, its own sound, its own complex yet utterly accessible musical identity or, better, brand. They have toured relentlessly all over the world, and as a result, this quintet is not only well seasoned, but also it has taken the music up the ladder a couple of rungs.

“Awase”, a term from martial arts, means “moving together” in the sense of matching energies, a fitting metaphor for the dynamic precision, tessellated grooves and balletic minimalism of Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss group. In the interim, trimmed from quintet to quartet size and with new bassist Thomy Jordi fully integrated, Ronin has become a subtly different band. Bärtsch speaks of a new-found freedom and flexibility in the approach to the material, with “greater transparency, more interaction, more joy in every performance”. The freedom here extends to revisiting early Bärtsch modules alongside new compositions including, for the first time on a Ronin record, a piece by reedman Sha. Awase was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France in October 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.