Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Holon

Aesthetically it is an extension of the current ECM sound, but moved from the concert hall into the dance club. It is in concert that Ronin—which apart from its samurai connotations simply, and in this case aptly, means "drifting person"—makes most sense. Usually played in near-total darkness with bleak green and purple lights wafting about the stage, Bärtsch's music becomes almost dystopian, its amorphousness a reflection of modern uncertainty.

This album does a good job of bringing that impression to a presumably well-lit living room. Bärtsch's muted piano string vamps, borne aloft by Björn Meyer's electric bass and Sha's bass clarinet—functioning in much the same way that Bennie Maupin's did for Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969)—are better presented in this set of Moduls, which Bärtsch has Braxtonianly called all of his numbered pieces in his career.

It is often said that the music on an album functions as a suite, which is either a simplification or an obvious comment. But Bärtsch's Moduls on Holon really do; maybe less a suite than working as a set of theme-and-variations to a melody we never get to hear in its pure form.