Nik Bärtsch offered the term "Zen Funk" to describe his group's music. In my review of his record Stoa, I brought up the obvious minimalist elements present in his concepts. On Holon, it's the funk that's pushing the minimalism in a new direction.

Ronin's brand of minimalism involves mixing layers of repeated figures with a slippery polyrhythmic element. At first this might sound a little on the Steve Reich side (not a bad thing) but the key is the bass of Bjorn Meyer. Meyer plays a muscular line that will bring to mind Steve Swallow with a little Charlie Hunter tossed in. This style brings out the funk in the rest of the group. Just listen to the way Meyer and bass clarinetist Sha lock in during "Modul 44." When Bärtsch begins spinning piano lines off of that throb, you can just imagine the grin spreading across his face.

To be fair, we're not talking P-Funk here. In fact, some pieces do lean toward a more formal sound: but none of them stay in that pocket from beginning to end. The opening track "Modul 42" starts off with some echoing piano double-stops that introduce the main theme, which is them mined for several minutes. Things get a little spacey when Sha's horn traces a distant and mournful path while Ronin's piano rings out chiming figures as accents. It manages to be quite lovely and thought-provoking at the same time.

Elsewhere Bärtsch and company lay down some seriously fun grooves on compositions such as "Module 41_47" (What's with this numbering scheme? Is this a Braxton record?!) and the bass-driven "Module 45" (which in the lead in my "Sounds Like the Lounge Lizards" competition). It's enough to get a person's toe tapping. When's the last time you heard that about a record on ECM?

If the music on Stoa as "Zen Funk," then this music is funk-master.  Holon will be released on 2/5/08