This is the first release since 2012's Live for the Swiss from composer/pianist Nik Bärtsch's long-running Ronin band, now remodelled as a quartet. Bärtsch's signature resources – built on looping, Steve Reichian minimalist figures, layered with brooding North-Euro sax murmurs and ingenious polyrhythmic accumulations, varied by breakouts into catchy jazz-funk – remain hypnotically present on Awase (it's a martial arts term from aikido, which Bärtsch practises), but much of the set has an exuberant and open feel that this meticulous, unflinchingly disciplined artist's studio work has sometimes lacked. Bärtsch's ‘Modul 60’ typically expands from an oscillating two-note figure, developing through quiet tenor saxophone hoots, glinting top-end keyboard motifs, and a slow-burn drums groove. The 18-minute ‘Modul 58’ draws a slow rock hook through saxophone and bass clarinet textures, octave ascents and root-note homecomings, and an almost jaunty finale of slamming piano chords and tenor exclamations. ‘Modul 36’ and ‘Modul 69’ have dreamier, more mysterious beginnings, but ingeniously deepen – with the former, a standout track, opening on tones that emerge as if from a mist, and pass through a bass-guitar melody of sparing harmonics and finger-slides, to a jubilant Headhunters-like dance finale. As is always said of Nik Bärtsch in jazz contexts, don't expect quirky improv or storming post-bop solos, but his jazz and rock-inflected ‘ritual music’ always exerts its own kind of mesmerising pull.