Nik Bärtsch Ronin: Spin (Ronin Rhythm Records RON 040CD)
Celebrating their 20th anniversary with a new album, new line-up and a documentary film created by BAFTA and Emmy award winner Julian Phillips, Ronin are also returning to Bärtsch’s own label after many years recording for ECM. This collection of live recordings is their ninth album, and freed from the strictures of Eicher’s house style Bärtsch (piano, keyboards), Sha (reeds), Jeremias Keller (electric bass) and Kaspar Rast (drums) opt for a punchier post-rock attack and a broader electro-acoustic palette.
The opening Modul 66, one of two new pieces, is an adrenaline-charged piece played with a fortissimo closer to the the Neil Cowley trio than the Ronin of old. On Modul 63, another new piece, Bärtsch uses his keyboards to create a noirish mood, brilliantly sustained until the arrival of a typically tight Zen Funk groove. Keller’s spidery bass patterns introduce a surprisingly gnarly attitude to old favourite Modul 14, while the closing Modul 23 is reframed for a post-Radiohead generation, Bärtsch’s keyboards once again proving highly effective as the group jam their way towards nirvana. As Ronin enter their third decade in great shape, their complex music now comes with added oomph.
Erik Honoré: Triage (Punkt Editions 3779654)
In the first of two trilogies in this month’s column to feature Arve Henriksen, the trumpeter is one of a galaxy of familiar artists woven into Honoré’s studio-produced soundscapes. Triage is the final album in a series which includes Heliographs (2014) and Unrest (2017), both released by Hubro, and its nine pieces take their inspiration from a variety of literary sources including Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson and old medical field-manuals from World War I. Playing with the idea of triage in both its battlefield sense and through the themes of urgency, recovery and the prioritisation of those things we cherish, Honoré has created an album that is at once challenging and immersive.
Using sound in much the same way as a visual artist uses paint, Honoré mixes, layers and edits his musical sources into coherent compositions, each with its own particular characteristics and mood. Nils Petter Molvær is majestic on the single Prague, while Henriksen is in equally stunning form on The Cantos. On Triage and Tourniquet frequent collaborator Jan Bang sings Honoré’s lyrics in a style somewhere between David Sylvian and Scott Walker, while Dickinson’s texts are recited in full on Hope Is The Thing With Feathers and Pain Has An Element Of Blank. With studio mastering from the renowned Stephen Mathieu, Honoré’s music has rarely sounded better.
Russ Lossing: Inventions (Blaser Music SONGS002CD CD)
It’s more than 20 years since Lossing first came to my attention with a superb set of releases for the Swiss hatOLOGY label. A fresh voice with few conspicuous influences, he is a player with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz and classical music whose nearest stylistic analogues are perhaps Paul Bley and Arnold Schönberg. The solo recital is a format he has returned to many times, but this improvised suite stands out as something quite unique in his discography.
Recorded late at night in the solitude of the living room of his new home in rural Pennsylvania, the six pieces are remarkably intimate and raw. Dozens of lines of enquiry stem from a simple phrase on the knotty opener Invention I, Lossing pushing the music to the edge of abstraction before an almost imperceptible shift in dynamics takes us into the somewhat nostalgic Invention II. Sparse motifs push against the heavy weight of silence on the crepuscular Invention III, and after a hesitant start Invention IV builds with an unstoppable momentum. Lossing is in more playful mood on the superb finale, plotting a path through a harmonic maze before his darting linear runs eventually coalesce around a melody. Great thought has clearly been given to the balance and flow of the pieces, and I can say with some confidence that it will surely be amongst the most complex and challenging parlour music you’ll ever hear.
Daniel Sommer with Arve Henriksen and Johannes Lundberg: Sounds & Sequences (April Records APR137)
Danish drummer Daniel Sommer shot to international attention earlier this year with the release of As Time Passes, a trio with guitarist Rob Luft and the great Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen. It was the first part in a Nordic trilogy that will see him collaborating with some of the most distinctive voices in Scandinavian jazz, and for this second volume he combines forces with bassist Johannes Lundberg and the ubiquitous Arve Henriksen for a deep-dive into the new Nordic ambient-jazz.
The 11 pieces have been distilled from many hours of studio improvisation, and rather like Lossing’s disc above the programme has been organised for optimal flow. If the trio occasionally fall back on some familiar musical tropes, Sommer’s spirited drumming differentiates the music from many of its more ethereal cousins. On Powerglass and Hey, Superhero his pulse drumming reminds me variously of Paul Motian and Jon Christensen, though at other times he can blend almost invisibly into a sea of shimmering reverb and delay.
It’s a real treat to hear Henriksen improvising at length and with so little inhibition, and his untreated horn is truly poetic on Ego Ekko. Lundberg’s lyrical and sometimes folk-inflected bass melodies often appear to connect this music to volume one, and connections are ultimately what this series is all about. The final volume, Lost Threads, is due in March 2025 and will feature up-and-coming Finnish pianist Artturi Rönkä and bassist Thommy Andersson.
Heard elsewhere
Other not strictly jazz-related music that I’ve enjoyed this month includes the long-awaited Xerrox, Vol. 5 from German minimalist electronica pioneer Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai), a huge influence on Nordic ambient-jazz, and Songs Of The Roma by Scottish guitarist Simon Thacker. Joined by cellist Justyna Jablonska and three Romany musicians from eastern Europe, Thacker’s produced a powerfully evocative work. In a recent e-mail he wryly described its wonderful finale as “futuristic Gypsy jazz!”