Nik Bärtsch's Ronin

Llyrìa is the third ECM album by Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, the Swiss band that reached an international audience with Stoa and Holon. Bärtsch's numbered "Moduls" still define the frame, but the group now takes a larger share in shaping them, and the line between composition and improvisation is harder to draw. The music is more open and more melodic than before, and old tags like "Zen funk" or "ritual groove music" fit it less well. The title is named after a recently discovered luminous deep-sea creature.

The quintet is Bärtsch on piano, Sha on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Björn Meyer on bass, Kaspar Rast on drums and Andi Pupato on percussion. Rast has played alongside Bärtsch for many years, and ECM's own notes call this, more than the earlier albums, a drummer's record. It was recorded in March 2010 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in the south of France, with Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. All seven pieces are by Bärtsch.

The opening Modul 48 sets reed and piano in parallel, contrapuntal lines over a walking bass. Modul 47 works on groove modulation: an irregular beat shifts, stops, and returns with a harder edge. The closing Modul 49_44 folds an older idea into a new one, reworking Modul 44 from Holon into an elliptical groove that moves between density and space. Across the set, Sha's alto and bass clarinet carry the lyrical themes, while Rast and Pupato build the beats in small, carefully placed layers.

In The Guardian in 2010, John Fordham still called it minimalism, while noting that Bärtsch had always stretched the method beyond rhythmic and motivic detail. Carlo Wolff wrote in JazzTimes that "pulse, repetition and convergence drive Llyria, a luminous album", music of community rather than display. For Sid Smith at BBC Music, it "thrillingly combines a Steve Reich-like minimalist aesthetic with the kind of effortless funk-punch reminiscent of a Headhunters-era Herbie Hancock". Thom Jurek at AllMusic found it slightly more organic and emotional than the previous Ronin discs.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2178, first released on 17 September 2010.