About

The third album from one of the most exciting young European bands, “Llyrìa” follows on from “Stoa” and “Holon”, the recordings that established the Swiss band Ronin on the international scene. Leader Nik Bärtsch’s “modular” pieces still define the context of the group’s music but the committed input of the individual Ronin members has lifted the work to the next level, blurring the distinctions between composition, improvisation and interpretation.

The music has become more open, so much so that Bärtsch’s old buzzwords like “Zen funk” and “ritual groove music” now scarcely apply and even “minimalism” is only a distant reference. Reed player Sha shines brightly here, and lyrical melodic themes make themselves felt, but perhaps this is, more than its predecessors, a drummer’s record, its beats lovingly crafted by Kasper Rast and percussionist Andi Pupato.

Recorded in the South of France in March 2010, with Manfred Eicher producing. - ECM Records

“What is, perhaps, most important about Llyrìa is that the touchstones that have so stringently defined the group can now be dispensed with, as Bärtsch's vernacular has become an entity distinct and separate from its multifaceted references. Even the unrelenting repetition of an earlier version of "Modul 4," from the pianist's solo album, Hishiryō (Tonus, 2002), is freed up here; raised in key, and with greater contrapuntal complexity, Bärtsch's cascading lines and Meyer's repeating bass pattern provide the foundation for Rast and Pupato to push and pull the pulse, building to an early climax that releases into a middle section where it becomes nearly impossible to discern where form ends and freedom begins.

Llyrìa also demonstrates the pianist's increasing compositional skill in narrative form; each Modul possessing its own, but when experienced as a whole, creating a captivating hour-long suite that seems almost to flow by in an instant, as if time itself has been suspended, despite a seemingly infinite number of memorable melodic fragments, rhythmic devices and harmonic movements both vertical and horizontal, all interlocking in a relentlessly shifting landscape. It's hard to think of a group and a concept that just keeps getting better with each successive record, but on Llyrìa, Bärtsch—and the now absolutely synchronous Ronin—continues to find new and consistently intriguing ways to expand the purview of a concept which, clearly mistakenly, seemed destined for a finite shelf life.” - All About Jazz

Musicians:

• Nik Bärtsch, piano
• Sha, bass clarinet, alto saxophone
• Björn Meyer, bass
• Kaspar Rast, drums
• Andi Pupato, percussion

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