Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin have played their own Zurich club Exil for 1,000 Mondays and 20 years, an invaluable live lab for their experiments in minimalist groove. Every song across their nine albums now is consecutively numbered, like classical opuses or scientific notes towards some unified theory of rhythm. Though the looping repetition recalls the likes of GoGo Penguin, the jagged edge of opener ‘Modul 66’ is abrasively intimate with rock like electric Miles, and Spin seethes with variety inside its theoretical parameters.

‘Modul 14’, a reworked, much loved composition from their 2002 debut Randori, conveys the intensity of those home crowd Mondays, new bassist Jeremias Keller’s pensive twang and Sha’s ominous alto recalling Radiohead’s OK Computer paranoia, till Kaspar Rast’s launch-velocity drums send piano splinters flying as Ronin hit a getaway groove.

Settling back into cruising velocity, the music is still prone to collapse and sudden assault. The Cold War mysterioso of ‘Modul 63’, though, offers suspenseful spy movie piano and the sax’s sour waterfront creep, before both take a cyclic climb to nowhere. ‘Modul 23’ is also eerily sorrowful, sheet-metal synth atmospherics and stately sax preceding a more upbeat, slippery mode. Ronin cheekily tag this unusually restless, raw form of minimalism as Zen funk, making them Swiss monks of mantric meter.