Fronted by Nik Bärtsch on acoustic piano, "Zen funk" outfit Ronin integrates the forms of electronic music, funk, jazz and minimalism into a truly singular sound. Beijing gets its taste this Thursday, when Ronin performs at Yugong Yishan. We ask Bärtsch about what has driven him and the rest of Ronin toward their unique sound.

CW: The rhythms and iterative, looping phrases of your music reminds me in many ways of electronic music. What parallels between your music and electronic music do you see?
Bärtsch: There is a difference between loops and repetitions. We like to play all musical phrases because this makes the music live, intensive and flexible. But we were listening also a lot to electronic music with its interesting possibilities of loops and filters. But always remember: every live playing musician already did equalizing the sound of his instrument since many centuries. Electronic music was created out of the consciousness for acoustic phenomenas, out of the ear…

Has electronic music had on your compositions? How? I listened for example to modern drum and bass DJs like Photek. He composes his tracks very carefully and sounds often for me more avangardistic then modern classical electronic music. I was always interested in rhythms, beats and overlapping of patterns and found also a lot of inspiration in the so-called "dance music."

When I first described Ronin to my friends, I said it was a fusion of funky jazz and Steve Reich-style minimalism. In what way does that sound accurate? In what way is the description misleading?
Funk is an important influence of our music: the beats, the interlocking patterns, the interest in groove ceremonies, the band spirit. Jazz of course also: the phrasing, the consciousness for the freedom of improvisation, the drive. The minimalism of Steve Reich was important for me because Reich thinks and experiments a lot with self flowing patterns and the phenomena of form, coherence of a piece and musical dramaturgy. This thinking about the important aspects of composition in relation with pattern work is interesting for me. But you can find this also for example in the music of Igor Stravinsky who is very important for me too, also concerning the ritualistic and dance music aspect of classical "Western" music. All descriptions lead to misunderstandings if you just interpret them on the surface: we have not a lot to do with the extensive solo culture and the swing of Jazz or the pulsation oriented softness of the classical American minimalism.

What about acoustic piano attracts you?
I can talk about this for a few weeks! So let’s make it short here: I love acoustic instruments in general because they show if somebody is really able to handle them. It’s an honest handcraft thing! You can also work extremely subtle with acoustic instruments, with an enormous variety. I love the piano specially because it is a magic mix between a percussion, harmonic and melodic instrument. Hand moved hammers hit strings: Its sound is abstract but warm and touching, rough and soft, strong and dense but transparent at the same time. You can practice your life long on your sound, technique and polyphonic and polymetric possibilities on the piano.

When you’re creating your compositions in the studio? Do you imagine your audience listening to them live or on their headphones or home stereo?
Compositions are made first to create coherency and dramaturgy – and of course to develop my own knowing about myself and my possibilities of composing. In every composition I have to outfox myself. But then I bring it into the band or whoever is playing it and it makes the next step of development. With Ronin we first rehears the compositions and then we play them in many shows in our Mondays Club in Zurich where we play every week since five years. After a while we get a feeling what the exact potential and difficulty of a piece is. A piece has to grow. Then we start to play the piece on tours and then we record it maybe. This is often a process of about three or four years from the first steps of composing on. In all of these processes I want to learn something about music, composition, the band and myself.

The titles of each track on the Holon album begin with the word “Modul” followed by a number. What is the concept behind this titling system?
To choose titles for aesthetic phenomenas like bands, concepts, styles or pieces needs a consciousness for the pictures, contexts and poetic values that you create. We as a band and I as a composer work with modular musical tactics and strategies. On the other hand we don’t want to tell the listener, what pictures or thoughts he or she should have, when they are listening to a musical piece. Everybody sees and feels different. We would like to leave the poetic freedom of the title to the listener.

You describe your style as “Zen funk”. What does “Zen” mean to you when you use the term this way?
It is important to read these words combined. "Zen" is a term with a long history and tradition. I am interested in Zen as a philosophy of life and especially in its idea of practicing the philosophy every day. It is a practical philosophy even if it has a strong history and background of strategies of thinking and finding words for the phenomenas in life. The European alternative for this philosophy is the old Greek Stoa school (That’s also why I have chosen ‘Stoa’ as a title for our first ECM record). Combined with ‘Funk’ it creates a paradox tension: emptiness and silence versus power of the groove, meditation versus rhythm rituals. I don’t know why but I need both energies to survive and maybe these two ‘philosophies’ have more common than we think: discipline, percussive roughness, less is more, doing nothing at the right spot. Even if the single members of the Ronin band are far away of being enlightened, the whole band as an organism is – at least through our lighting technician …

I find that something about your music makes my mind wander. Is it dangerous to drive a car or operate heavy machinery while listening to Ronin?
Our drummer Kaspar Rast has a friend who is driving teacher. He uses Ronin tracks to confuse driving students while they are driving a car. Normally they have never heard this music before and are getting nervous because it has such a different dramaturgy and flow. Many are not able to drive anymore without stopping the music. An other friend of mine created his own track list for driving in the night and called it ‘Ritual Drive’. He went especially in he night out to drive on the highway with our music as kind of a trip. I can not drive myself so I can not give an answer out of my personal experience but I can tell what Stravinsky said: self chosen limitation (focus) creates enormous freedom.

What do you hope to do or see while in Beijing?
Unfortunately we are only very short in Beijing and cannot really enjoy its whole variety and complexity. But to travel and present our music is our life and we are very happy to have the possibility to communicate the first time with an audience in Beijing and China. Mostly through people you get in touch with a country or city. And when you can show what you love to do most yourself, normally this contact is very real and honest and you learn a lot. That’s anyway what I am interested the most: learning.

DETAILS

Ronin at Yugong Yishan, Thursday, Nov. 12, ¥50, Tel: 6404-2711