Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Live (2012) [Hi-Res]

Ronin around the world: a powerful and atmospheric concert recording with music captured in Germany, Austria, Holland, England, and Japan, a double-album which transmits the live impact of Nik Bärtsch’s band and its enveloping modular groove music of interlocking rhythms. It’s also a set that marks the end of an era and the transition into a new one. These are the last recordings of Ronin with Björn Meyer’s elegantly-leaping bass guitar as one of the lead voices, and Bärtsch views the album as partly a tribute to Meyer’s long tenure with the band. New bassist Thomy Jordi, meanwhile, makes an impressive entrance on “Modul 55”, but it’s most often the whole band, as a unified field of force, that commands the listener’s attention.

A concert is a meditative and explosive form of collaboration. Everyone present is responsible for its success; they create focus and energise the listening experience, ready for excitement, if their joint efforts can conjure up the musical spirits.

The antique Greek amphitheatre of Epidauros was integrated into its environs so that the listeners’ attention would be fully concentrated on the stage, thus turning the communal live experience under the starry sky into a universal focal point of emotions.

This atmosphere is central for every concert; its own sense of time unfolds as the space becomes a kind of acoustical coral reef. Like light in water, sounds and resonances appear in the air; strange creatures seem to swim by our ears – where are we, when we hear music?

From the outset, Ronin has considered itself a socio_musical entity, as well as a live band, one feeding from the concert situation and the audi­ ence’s energy; in the same way as rediscovering the phrasing, the sound, the dynamics and the actual progress of the concert each time, the group must find new contact with the audience at every concert.

At one of our first concerts (it was in a underground club), a dog began to howl just before a climactic moment. The reaction was the same as if a master of ceremonies, a singer or a listener had screamed; the band was unleashed and played its way into a trance as the audience immediately relaxed and became more attentive. Although the moment was funny in a sense, the energy level in the room rocketed.

Neighborhood dogs don’t attend our concerts much anymore; instead, people from all over the world are in our audiences, each with their own special presence and unique lifelong listening experience. So our audiences have the same effect on the band as a producer in a recording studio, listening both critically and enthusiastically; the one and the other make for an exciting mix. After all, music only exists if someone hears it – and that influences its gestalt. Musical empathy is an evolutionary quality, extending from the time long before we became humans – and that is why communal music_ making is no luxury; it is existentially vital.

We have chosen nine pieces from more than fifty concerts recorded during the last three years which, we believe, are compelling in their diversity, originating in venues from Lörrach to Tokyo.

Our thanks go to our audiences for helping us make our concerts live. (Nik Bärtsch)

Nik Bärtsch, piano & Fender Rhodes
Sha, bass clarinets & alto saxophone
Björn Meyer, bass
Thomy Jordi, bass (on track Modul 55)
Kaspar Rast, drums
Andi Pupato, percussion

Tracklist:
01. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 41_17 - Lörrach (16:39)
02. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 35 - Leipzig (11:31)
03. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 42 - Wien (8:09)
04. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 17 - Tokyo (8:59)
05. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 22 - Amsterdam (14:45)
06. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 45 - Mannheim (13:12)
07. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 48 - Gateshead (8:37)
08. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 47 - Mannheim (13:11)
09. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin - Modul 55 - Salzau (10:00)