Michel Benita, Ethics

River Silver is the first ECM album led by the Algiers-born bassist Michel Benita, after more than three decades in the Paris jazz scene. He made it with Ethics, the group he formed in 2010 to bring jazz together with his love of folk traditions from many places. The band is international and its sound is unusual: flugelhorn, Japanese koto, guitar with electronics, bass and drums. The result is quiet, lyrical music that moves between idioms without announcing it.

Benita had already recorded twice for ECM with Andy Sheppard, on Trio Libero and Surrounded by Sea. Ethics brings together Matthieu Michel on flugelhorn, from Fribourg, and Mieko Miyazaki on koto, from Tokyo. Alongside them are the Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset, a partner in Sheppard's quartet, and the French drummer Philippe Garcia. The album was recorded in April 2015 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due, with Stefano Amerio as engineer and Manfred Eicher producing.

Most of the pieces are Benita's own. He adds Hacihi Gatsu by Miyazaki, Yeavering by the Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell, and Lykken by the Norwegian composer and organist Eyvind Alnæs (1872-1932). The flugelhorn usually carries the melody, while koto, bass and drums interact at the core and Aarset's guitar and what Benita calls "organic electronics" surround them. In Hacihi Gatsu the koto and bass trade closely, while Lykken sets a plain, singing tune over full, clear bass lines. I See Altitudes has the flugelhorn rising over bass, with the koto pulled back into the texture.

Reviewers kept returning to the place of the koto, which is part of the music's structure rather than a touch of colour. For Thom Jurek at AllMusic, Benita and Ethics "have found a unique voice on River Silver; it is beguiling, seductive, and resonant". John Kelman at All About Jazz praised the band's ability "to mine such a subdued space for fifty minutes while remaining thoroughly captivating throughout". In Kultur, Peter Füßl noted that the thirteen-string zither is never treated as oriental decoration. James Poore at MusicWeb International found the title track, with its soundscape edge, less successful than the rest.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2483, released on 15 January 2016.