Jazz Articles
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l'Oumigmag: Ce Qui Tourne Dans L'Air
by David Bruggink
"Oumigmag" means “muskox" in Inuktitut, one of the principal Inuit languages spoken in Canada's northeast and central northern provinces. Sébastien Sauvageau, a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Québec, drew on his province's musical and Indigenous histories to create the jazz-folk project l'Oumigmag--an effort, he writes, to explore “how past elements (traditional music), present experiences, and future innovations coexist and influence one another." l'Oumigmag debuted as a quartet on Territoires (The 270 Sessions, 2017), expanded to a sextet for ...
Continue ReadingKALI Trio: The Playful Abstract
by David Bruggink
Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Rhythm Records has become a go-to label for hypnotic groove enthusiasts. Established in 2006, its artists share a focus on uncommon time signatures and post-minimalist composition but interpret them in strikingly different ways. For example, Blaer leans towards the more restrained, stately and steady, building to powerful catharsis, similar to the Colin Vallon Trio; HELY invites comparisons with artists on Gondwana Records that elegantly combine jazz instrumentation with indie rock structures. Enter KALI Trio, whose debut ...
Continue ReadingBlaer: 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 ...
Continue ReadingIkarus: 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 ...
Continue ReadingSha: 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 ...
Continue ReadingBlaer: 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 ...
Continue ReadingIkarus: 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.
Continue ReadingMarkus 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 ...
Continue ReadingIkarus: 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 ...
Continue ReadingIkarus: 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 ...
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