Welcome sounds from alien lands

By David Honigmann

World music seeps inexorably into other genres. But its influences vary. Three recent releases from ECM, a label best known for chilly Nordic Jazz and Baltic new music, show the effects - instrumental, argumentative and philosophical.
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Nik Bärtsch's Ronin take philosophical inspiration from world music. Bärtsch is a jazz pianist, but Stoa takes a fairly conventional line-up of piano, drums, bass and reeds in different directions. Its five "moduls" are rhythmically relentless, like the trance thumb piano grooves of Konono No 1 played on western instruments. Bärtsch plays tight, mathematical loops of piano, nodding at Steve Reich and backwards to Balinese gamelan. None of the sounds here is specifically world-orientated, but the philosophy is rooted in eastern thought and Bärtsch wrote many of the compositions during a sabbatical in Kobe. Zen-funk, Bartsch calls it; the closest comparison would be Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band soundtracking a Noh play. (...)