KALI Trio's new album, The Playful Abstract, could be a soundtrack to the air we breathe. Repeated listens to this tranquil, ever-shifting and sometimes transcendent record also invoke an association with the Japanese term, Ukiyo, meaning the "floating world".�Nowadays ukiyo is seen as a state of mind emphasising living in the moment, detached from the difficulties of life.

KALI Trio's new album, The Playful Abstract, could be a soundtrack to the air we breathe. Repeated listens to this tranquil, ever-shifting and sometimes transcendent record also invoke an association with the Japanese term, Ukiyo, meaning the "floating world".�Nowadays ukiyo is seen as a state of mind emphasising living in the moment, detached from the difficulties of life.

A Certain Darkness Is Needed to See the Stars" (38:51 min.) is an energetic, minimal, polyrhythmic composition. It was played on a single prepared drum set (with aluminium foil), without any loops or overdubs. Time and form dissolve as loops and repetitions take hold. The piece expands and contracts. It changes texture while still maintaining a steady pulsating fluidity. The listener is forced to cede control and relax into it. You never know how long any given theme will stay the same, nor what will follow.

BASta! Is the solo project of double bass player and composer Joris Vanvinckenroye, in which he explores and pushes the limits of the double bass. In this project, using looping and effect pedals, Joris creates an almost orchestral sound, using the full range of his instrument-from the deepest basses to the highest notes. These layered compositions weave complex rhythms and melodies into a rich and compelling soundscape.

BASta! Is the solo project of double bass player and composer Joris Vanvinckenroye, in which he explores and pushes the limits of the double bass. In this project, using looping and effect pedals, Joris creates an almost orchestral sound, using the full range of his instrument - from the deepest basses to the highest notes. These layered compositions weave complex rhythms and melodies into a rich and compelling soundscape.

RIOT

ROFU MANTA MANTRA

Swiss pianist Nik Bartsch’s group effort with Mobile establishes his concept of ritual groove music (or perhaps Zen funk) with this album. The sounds they convey are lean but not mean, spare beyond compare, very European, and unlike any of his contemporary groups, the Esbjorn Svensson Trio, or ECM groups in particular. The inventive drumming of Kaspar Rast provides supple support for Bartsch, Mats Eser’s marimba, and the bass clarinet or alto sax work of Don Li. There’s an airy, spacious, and cool Scandinavian feel to all of the pieces, dubbed “Moduls.” The development of “Modul 5” is lugubriously slow, almost ritualistic, and based on a one-note bass piano key vamp, while a mere three notes in a pseudo waltz with juxtaposed drum rhythms from Rast cement the most palpable distinct groove during “Modul 11.” Their most labyrinth and bottomless underground voicing is “Modul 4,” and while staying in that mode, “Modul 2” is extremely quiet and low-key, with a nominal understated advance that is hard even to discern. There’s a short free minimalist piece quite similar to Steve Reich and a concluding solo piano offering from Bartsch that further emphasizes space between notes being much more important and prevalent than the notes themselves. A tip-of-the-iceberg recording, in the figurative and literal sense, one can speculate this is a mere beginning, almost child’s play, for what Bartsch and his crew have in store for the future of his compelling and singularly original music.

SPIN is the 9th release of the working band RONIN since it's foundation in 2001. Since the last release AWASE (ECM 2018) the band has developed the repertoire continuously further. �SPIN shows the phase in which the band is now: looking back and forward at the same time. The RONIN rhythm culture based on pattern, cycle and groove developments and refined beats is still presented and combined with playfulness and the consciousness for freedom within the clear structures.

When you listen to these songs, all types of feelings and sensations start to coalesce in different parts of your body. It's hard to define them because they speak to emotional gradients, contradictions, and contrasts: not the type of emotions that you can easily qualify with a single word. Real relationships, beyond the reductive "a moment in time" type of snapshots, are like that: complex and dynamic. This is what makes this record exceptional - and not only as far as instrumental music is concerned!

SOLO

Hely: Plode

Mind Spun was founded in 2016 when the two guitarists Matthieu Grillet, Jonathan Hohl and drummer Léo Juston started a tribute to the post-metal band Animals As Leaders. Through this project, they had the opportunity to get invited for the DKSJ (Directors' conference of the Swiss Jazz Schools) Tour in Switzerland. Inspired by the workflow for this event, the members began to compose original songs. In 2017, bass player Lucien Leclerc and sax player Leo Fumagalli joined the band and the quintet spent the year to compose their first EP, which was released in 2019. The EP garnered positive feedback and the band got to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival that same year. The guitar post minimal and prog tradition of Ronin Rhythm Records with bands like Sha’s Feckel, Sonar, Markus Reuter or also ingredients of Dee Day Dub opened a connection to this upcoming math rock band from the Romandie (French-speaking part of Switzerland) - a true working band with rhythmic refinement and consciousness for electrified soundscapes and rock dramaturgy.

Sha’s Feckel has no interest in the jazz status quo. For its sophomore album Feckel for Lovers, the Swiss quartet has chosen to emphasize the rock element of its jazz-rock leanings, amping up the energy and crunch by several factor. The band is part of a new wave of Swiss acts stretching the boundaries of pattern-based, minimalist-inspired music deep into the expansive rock realm. It’s comprised of saxophonist Sha and drummer Kaspar Rast- both also part of Nik Bartsch’s Ronin- and guitarist Urs Mueller and bassist Sarah Zaugg. The group’s previous bassist Lionel Gafner performs on the album. “Feckel is about producing the most powerful, anarchic sound waves possible,” said Sha. “We explore all sorts of rhythmic structures that talk to your brain, as well as your body. We try to make uneven meters sound fluid so listeners can really feel immersed and connected to the music. It’s rough, tough, loud stuff, but has a positive energy which allows us to spread love to and through the audience.”

BORDERLAND