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Blaer: Pure
by Dan McClenaghan
Swiss pianist Maja Nydegger sounds like a musical first cousin to Nik Bartsch. With his groups Ronin and Mobile, pianist Bartsch create intriguing ritual groove music and Zen funk--descriptors Bartsch has used for his style--stirred up with modern classical sounds. Nydegger, with her group Blaer, crafts a similar mode of expression on her fourth album, Pure, on Bartsch's Ronin Rhythm Records. So, the comparison between Bartsch and Nydegger: Bartsch does not shy away from the explosive. He and ...
read moreIkarus: Plasma
by Geno Thackara
While they have an ambition worthy of their mythological namesake, this Ikarus is in no danger of melting and crashing after flying too high. Their exuberance is a little less wild yet, in its own way, no less adventurous. This quintet melds the sum of its minimalist parts into something transcendent yet always understated. Without needing to shoot for the sky, they look for a subtler kind of euphoria in gliding. For music which is essentially minimalist, it ...
read moreSha: Monbijou
by Mike Jacobs
Aside from an existing appreciation of the saxophonist's creativity, it would be a mistake to approach Sha's Monbijou with any preconceptions. While this is a notion that has applied to his main group, Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, the tack Sha takes on this album is well removed from even that. Considering the integrated groupthink which characterizes nearly all of his work in (and outside of) Ronin, part of that remove is to be expected-- after all, this is a ...
read moreBlaer: Yellow
by Mike Jurkovic
With a whispery shifting undertow, Swiss pianist-composer Maja Nydegger constructs her vivid, musical imaginings of Yellow on the memories of melodies perceived and experienced in other lifetimes, in other dimensions, in other states of humanness. Some, like the quietly sensual title track and its immediate successor, “The Unknown," expand towards full consciousness slowly, methodically urging you into that headspace where time's fluidity isn't the insistent threat of mortality but a warm, welcome embrace. Others, like the feverish, fractal sawing of ...
read moreIkarus: Mosaismic
by Mike Jurkovic
Like morse code lapping against the rampant stream of everything binary, the minimal groove of Germany's Ikarus—which is drummer Ramon Oliveras, pianist Lucca Fries double bassist Moritz Meyer and the wordless, gravity-free scat singing of Andreas Lareida and Anna Hirsch—makes for an edgy, compelling atmosphere. Economic to the point of sparseness, Ikarus, like its Ronin Rhythm Records label mate and co-producer Nik Bartsch, is obsessed with trickier-the-better time changes, colliding counterpoints and evocative duets of insistent pulse.
read moreMarkus Reuter featuring Sonar and Tobias Reber: Falling for Ascension
by Glenn Astarita
Billed as a minimalist groove band, the Swiss musicians performing under the moniker Sonar recently collaborated with experimental guitar hero David Torn on the widely heralded, Sonar with David Torn (Rare Noise, 2018). And here, they merge their unique craft with one of the reigning touch style guitar pioneers, Markus Reuter along with his partner from Stick Men and active King Crimson member, Tony Levin (Chapman Stick) and Security Project, ex-King Crimson WARR guitarist Trey Gunn. Here, Reuter and live ...
read moreIkarus: Chronosome
by Budd Kopman
Drummer Ramón Oliveras is the composer and leader of Ikarus and Chronosome is this band's second release, after the powerful and stunning Echo . There is no sophomore jinx here, as this recording starts off where the earlier one begins only to fly higher and delve deeper while still creating immense physical soundspaces. The album was produced by Nik Bartsch and Oliveras, and the music of Ikarus, as stated before, does fall within somewhere within the genre defined ...
read moreIkarus: Echo
by Budd Kopman
Music has the extraordinary power to alter time and space for its duration, as well as being used to arouse emotions. The terms “abstract" and “concrete" are often used to describe particular music in a way that is widely understood, and yet the actual definitions remain elusive. Echo, from the band Ikarus, contains music which is extremely powerful, shocking, eerie and, in the end, beautiful. Composer and drummer Ramón Oliveras, is joined by two vocalists, Stefanie Suhner and ...
read moreSha's Feckel: Greatest Hits
by John Kelman
With Stoa (ECM, 2006), the world at large was introduced to Nik Bärtsch and his hypnotic, booty-shaking Zen Funk. But the Swiss pianist's rapid ascendance, thanks to the international reach and reputation of ECM Records, was only the tip of the iceberg. Not only had Bärtsch released six previous albums since 2001, on his own Ronin Rhythms Records--four with his now-longstanding Ronin, plus a solo piano record and the album that started it all, Ritual Groove Music (2001), with his ...
read moreSha's Banryu: Chessboxing Volume One
by John Kelman
With a group possessing as strong and unique an identity as Swiss pianist Nik Bartsch's Ronin--heard most recently on the remarkable Holon (ECM, 2008) and in performance in Kristiansand, Norway at Punkt 08--It's not surprising that the debut album by its reedman Sha possesses many of the same characteristics. Ronin, after all, is more than just a group; it's a musical philosophy combining minimalist tendencies with deep grooves and improvisation so subtle that it's at a near subconscious level. Chessboxing ...
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