Continuum is the ECM debut of Mobile, the acoustic group that Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch founded in 1997, years before his better known band Ronin. After four Ronin albums for the label, it takes Bärtsch back to the source of his ritual, repetition-based music. On three of its eight pieces the quartet grows into a chamber ensemble with a string quintet.
The quartet is Bärtsch on piano, Sha on bass and contrabass clarinet, and Kaspar Rast and Nicolas Stocker on drums and percussion, Stocker also on tuned percussion. Its line-up overlaps with Ronin's. Two violins, viola and two cellos form the extended version of the group. Mobile's early work included concerts lasting up to 36 hours, with lighting, video and swordsmanship as part of the event. The album was recorded in March 2015 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, engineered by Stefano Amerio and produced by Manfred Eicher.
As always with Bärtsch, the pieces are numbered modules. He has said that their rhythmic organisation owes more to Stravinsky, Ligeti, funk and ritual music than to the classic minimalism of Riley, Reich or Glass. Ligeti's Continuum for harpsichord (1968) gave the album its title. The same piece fed into Modul 5, together with Schwarzweiss, a 1979 work by Zurich composer Edu Haubensak, and the track moves on a fast, hocketing rhythm. Modul 29_14 opens with piano and glockenspiel figures over busy, interlocking drums. In Modul 18, one of the string pieces, bowed strings hang over a repeated bass drum. Modul 4 is the most direct track, with honking bass clarinet and a steady backbeat, while Modul 8_11 starts from plucked piano strings and settles into a riff in seven.
Writing in DownBeat, Carlo Wolff described the eight tracks as "marvels of control and tension, as much atmosphere as groove" and the whole as "an album of edgy beauty". For Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz, the strings reflect Bärtsch's interest in Ligeti, and Continuum is "the best of Mobile's albums to date". John L. Walters, in London Jazz News (2016), praised the transparent production and the care with which bass clarinet and strings fit into the group sound.
CD edition, ECM 2464, released in March 2016.
