The Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch is many things: a club proprietor (he describes his Zurich venue Exil as a “self-perpetuating organism for creating experimental music”), an academic (he studied linguistics and philosophy and currently lectures on aesthetics) and a martial artist (with a black belt in aikido). For 20 years, he’s also been one of the biggest names on the European jazz circuit, but his music has always drawn from myriad sources – the spiky modernism of Bartók and Stravinsky, the polyrhythmic funk of bands like the Meters and proggy indie-rock bands such as Battles and Tortoise.
His two regular lineups – the electric quintet Ronin and the acoustic quartet Mobile – are fascinating, but can be hard work. In a band situation, Bärtsch’s tricksy compositions (usually numbered pieces prefixed by the word “Modul”) are often a headache-inducing mess of interlocking rhythms and clashing harmonies. But, when rearranged for solo piano, they have room to breathe, which is why Entendre – his first album entirely played on solo acoustic piano, with no overdubs – might be his finest yet.
On the 2004 album Rea, Modul 26 was a unlovable prog-rock groove in the disorientating time signature of 7/8; here, it’s transformed into a glittering piece of minimalism in which he improvises over a mechanical ostinato lefthand riff, like a harmonically adventurous Philip Glass playing boogie-woogie. Likewise, on the 2010 album Llyrìa, Modul 55 descends into dreary Japanese jazz-rock: the piano version is a much more engaging and meditative construction that successfully reinterprets the shakuhachi flute solo and lingers, deliciously, over a repeated riff. Modul 58_12 melds two old pieces into an eight-minute epic that channels Bärtsch’s love of Steve Reich. He also revisits his fascination with Balkan folk melodies, and harks back to his roots as a drummer: Modul 5 sees him drumming on a single note for three minutes, exploring its multiple harmonics, before transforming these hammered rhythms into a lengthy, phase-shifting piece. For anyone who can usually only tolerate Bärtsch in small doses, this is one LP that merits repeated listening.
Also out this month
Potential Landscapes is the debut LP by New York-based composer and bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, featuring four drone-based pieces with various guests. The most compelling is the heavenly From Thin Air, where the multitracked, overlapping hums of singer Elisa Bragg are accompanied by bowed bass. Cellist Patrick Belaga has worked with a range of R&B artists and soundtracked Lady Gaga’s 2017 documentary film: his debut album Blutt is a series of drumless, ambient instrumentals that make a dream-like suite from shimmering synths, echo-laden pianos, woozy strings and wordless vocals. Claire Rousay’s A Softer Focus is a collaboration with visual artist Dani Toral that mixes obsessive field recordings, clanking typewriter sounds and pitch-shifted, harmonised conversations with string and piano arrangements: sporadically, they succeed in transforming mundane soundscapes into something epic and transcendent.
