After three studio albums – Stoa (2006), Holon (2008), and Lyria (2010) plus one live-double-CD (2012) – with his electric band RONIN Swiss keyboardist/composer Nik Bärtsch now presents a new album with his original group MOBILE (whose line-up overlaps with the current RONIN cast).
MOBILE, originally founded in 1997 (and on the new album augmented on three tracks by a string quintet), is at the source of Bärtsch’s ritualistic approach to music making. This approach has been formed by his work with concepts of reduction and repetition as well as his fascination with Japanese culture. Here textures from jazz, funk, new music, minimal as well as ritual and sacral music are organically interwoven in the service of an energetic group sound. Continuum was recorded at Lugano’s RSI studio in March 2015 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
FEATURED ARTISTS
TRACKLIST
A1 Modul 29_14 8:59
A2 Modul 12 9:02
B1 Modul 18 8:03
B2 Modul 5 8:32
C1 Modul 60 9:27
C2 Modul 4 5:26
D1 Modul 44 10:23
D2 Modul 8_11 8:32
BACKGROUND
In the beginning there was Mobile. Now, after three ECM studio recordings and a live double album with his other band Ronin, Swiss keyboardist and composer Nik Bärtsch presents a new album with his original all-acoustic group, here augmented on three pieces by a string quintet.
Founded in 1997 Mobile is effectively the wellspring of Bärtsch’s ritualistic approach to music making, nourished by his concepts of reduction and repetition as well as his fascination with Japanese culture. Here textures from jazz, funk, new music, minimal as well as ritual and sacred music are organically interwoven. Bärtsch and his partners Kaspar Rast, Sha and Nicolas Stocker aim for an energetic total group sound rather than displays of soloistic virtuosity.
Behind Bärtsch’s original decision to step away from conventionally interacting ad-hoc ensembles was a wish to explore musical and social energies more deeply with a group based on the idea of continuity at multiple levels. This “musically-focused community”, as Bärtsch calls it, has played concerts of marathon durations – up to 36 hours – in which music, lighting and performance space design, video arts and swordsmanship have been brought together.
After establishing these complex artistic rituals with Mobile, Ronin was founded in order to address the musical material more flexibly and directly. The group’s recordings include the ECM albums Stoa (2006), Holon (2008), Llyrìa (2010) and Ronin Live (2012), with concert recordings from 2009 to 2011.
In both ensembles Bärtsch tenaciously embodies a pragmatism in line with the classic creed of Asian martial arts: practice long enough and what you have practiced will change by itself, if you are alert and ready. Accordingly, a musical system may take on a momentum and development of its own through the steady power of repetition.
With Mobile Extended – the core band plus the string players – Bärtsch presents the chamber music aspects of his musical thought. Mobile’s music is organized in what Bärtsch calls ‘modules’ and it develops spirally. Its structures, based on the repetition of certain elements, may remind listeners of the pulse patterns in minimal music. But in contrast to ‘classic’ minimalist works by Riley, Reich or Glass, Bärtsch’s pieces are propelled through rhythm and beats rather than through floating pulsations.
“The way we organize our ‘modules’ rhythmically is more related to certain strategies of Stravinsky or Ligeti, to funk or to certain kinds of ritual music than to classic minimalism, which tends to use a more linear rhythmic Pointillism. We shape rhythm as a vehicle for dramaturgy: we are interested in its spin and its potential as an acoustic picture puzzle,” Bärtsch explains.
He cites an early piece by György Ligeti, the Continuum for Harpsichord of 1968, as an important influence. Together with the vision of a continuous spiral development of the group it has inspired the title of the new album. Also it gave impetus to ‘Modul 5’ – with Schwarzweiss, a piece by Zurich composer Edu Haubensak from 1979 – functioning as a kind of intermediate stop. Ligeti’s rhythmic finesse, his interest in New Music and his quest for new solutions in combining old and new music have inspired Bärtsch’s artistic approach.
While the music on Continuum strictly follows Bärtsch’s compositional logic it also conveys a sensuous physicality, thriving on conceptual juxtapositions as it seeks freedom through clear flexible systems and the interplay of structure and surprise, pathos and irony.
Continuum was recorded at Lugano’s RSI studio in March 2015 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Nik Bärtsch is on tour in the coming months with several formations including Mobile Extended, Mobile (quartet), Ronin, a duo with reedman Sha, and solo performances. Concerts with the full Mobile Extended line-up include a CD release show on April 6 at Zürich’s Kirche Neumünster, and an appearance at London’s Barbican Centre on July 2. The quartet version of Mobile has concerts coming up in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Austria, and in May visits the United States, with concerts at Portland’s Alberta Abbey (May 1), The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy (May 5), and New York’s Rubin Museum (May 6).
3 Reviews Hide Reviews Show Reviews
-
Great
I really Nik Bartsch and his style of modern jazz that has a cross over into classical, it`s the sort of music I can get lost in sort of meditative.
-
More polyrhythmic wonders from Nik Bärtsch and company...
Nik Bärtsch first unleashed his Ritual Groove Music concept on the world with the release of RITUAL GROOVE MUSIC, by Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile, in 2001. Characterized by what sounds at first to be unchanging pieces of music, closer, careful listening reveals intricate polyrhythms at work, interacting with subtly changing melodic structures that, rather than bore, caused me to focus my attention on the patterns. I’ve been listening to him for 15 years or so, and I have always found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience. This is genre-defying music that, for want of a more rigid classification, I’ve filed under ‘jazz’ – but as diverse as ‘jazz’ can be, it does little justice to Bärtsch’s work. There’s little or no improvisation going on in his recordings – the musicians improvise mainly in the construction of the pieces, working out the arrangements of Nik’s compositions as a band. When they perform them on stage, each note is precisely placed and executed – it’s really pretty breathtaking on close listening, with the ability to transport this listener. Bärtsch has an amazing ability to play with each hand working independently in different tempos. Anyone out there who plays the piano, think about that for a moment. We’re talking about rhythm structures of, for example, 15/4 working with/against something like 5/8. Like a lot of African music that utilizes polyrhythms, the two tempos seem at times to clash, then work their way back around in the cycle until they’re in sync briefly, only to fly off in two different directions again. If it sounds complex, it is. Add to that the rest of the band churning away in the same manner, and you get quite the audio stew. Bärtsch also leads Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin on several releases, with slightly different personnel. Each band has its own specific aesthetic – I won’t attempt as a lay listener to explain them, but I enjoy them both immensely. CONTINUUM is the first Mobile release since AER in 2004. Musicians on this new recording (just out this week), credited as Mobile Expanded, are Bärtsch (piano, compositions), Sha (bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet), Kaspar Rast (drums, percussion), Nicolas Stocker (drums, tuned percussion), Etienne Abelin (violin), Ola Sendecki (violin), David Schnee (viola), Solme Hong (cello) and Ambrosius Huber (cello). This is the first recording released of Bärtsch working with strings, and I have to say it works beautifully. The strings are sometimes played bowed, sometimes, plucked, sometimes struck – but the fit right in, both rhythmically and in the melodic wash. This arrived Friday (it was scheduled for tomorrow, and I’m glad it got here early!), and it’s been in pretty heavy rotation in my car. There’s a lot of delicacy and subtlety in this music, but it’s also capable of unbridled power that can lift the listener off the ground. In other words, turn it up.
-
Musical Theater: Entering the Ritual
Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch has issued some remarkable albums consisting of a series of so-called Moduls, which are minimalistic, tribal, ritualistic, sometimes trance-dance-like explorations. His new group Mobile includes clarinetist Sha and two drummer and percussionists Kaspar Ras and Nicolas Stocker, and on this album Continuum he has added a string quintet of two violins, viola, and two cellos. The emphasis is somewhat different than with his group Ronin by being less funky and even more open-ended, dramatic and theatrical. While ECM free jazz and improvisational, it has the spirit of avant-garde classical. The rhythms and modes may swing or enchant, may be emotionally dark and mysterious or amusing and frenetic. The strings with their sustained notes offer a different feeling, of edgy chamber music, to the otherwise percussive sound. At the end of the fifth track, Modul 60, there is a suggestion of folk music, and the next Modul 4 reminds me of the feverish section of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring when the tension rises. With repetitive, wavelike pitch rising and lowering and increasing intensity of drumming, the following track concentrates our focus, as a mantra. The final track, Modul 8_11, begins with 'prepared' piano and xylophone chimes and the rhythm shifts to a bouncy, funky beat. It is the 'release' required in rituals and allows the listener/participant to dance away in spiritual freedom. Bärtsch is certainly unique in the musical world, and his compositions/studies are attractive and innovative within the narrow niche of core ritualistic art.
