THE NECKS - Three
ReR Megacorp Necks14
Chris Abrahams - piano, keys; Tony Buck - drums, percussion, guitar; Lloyd Swanton - bass
This is the Australian post-jazz improv trio’s 21st album release, and while it’s too much to say that there’s an element of career retrospective here there are nods to their own more recent past: the rocking ‘Body’ from 2018 or the atmos-jazz of 1994’s ‘Aquatic’ . Three long tracks make up the album, crafted from the long spontaneous free-form jams on which The Necks have built their live reputation, enriched with overdubs and textural additions to widen the screen. ‘Bloom’ has a hint of the Dusseldorf motorik in unyielding chatter of percussion, like a busy factory working at full output, creating a dense bed of sound onto which Lloyd Swanton gingerly lowers massive blobs of bass guitar, while Abrahams drapes poignant minor chords over the top. There’s additional synth textures working away as well, but everything gets a bit lost in the sheer sonic density and the cumulative effect is either hypnotic or deadening depending on your taste. ‘Lovelock’ is a textural piece, with dense clouds of sonic steam drifting dreamily overhead, colliding and reforming in slow-motion - it clocks in at just over 22 minutes but seems much longer. ‘Further’ has the kind of loping 5/4 groove and repeating bluesy bassline that Alice Coltrane et al specialised in in the 1970s, and which has returned to vogue rebranded as ‘spiritual jazz’. There are mellow organ and Morricone-style guitar overdubs, clanking percussion, and tinkly minor key piano, and the whole drifts pleasantly by for twenty minutes or so before fading away, though it could just as easily have continued for the same amount of time, or ended fifteen minutes earlier. The Necks occupy a space that’s all their own and this record will only enhance their reputation for uncompromising creative fearlessness.
Reviewed by Eddie Myer
ReR Megacorp Necks14
Chris Abrahams - piano, keys; Tony Buck - drums, percussion, guitar; Lloyd Swanton - bass
This is the Australian post-jazz improv trio’s 21st album release, and while it’s too much to say that there’s an element of career retrospective here there are nods to their own more recent past: the rocking ‘Body’ from 2018 or the atmos-jazz of 1994’s ‘Aquatic’ . Three long tracks make up the album, crafted from the long spontaneous free-form jams on which The Necks have built their live reputation, enriched with overdubs and textural additions to widen the screen. ‘Bloom’ has a hint of the Dusseldorf motorik in unyielding chatter of percussion, like a busy factory working at full output, creating a dense bed of sound onto which Lloyd Swanton gingerly lowers massive blobs of bass guitar, while Abrahams drapes poignant minor chords over the top. There’s additional synth textures working away as well, but everything gets a bit lost in the sheer sonic density and the cumulative effect is either hypnotic or deadening depending on your taste. ‘Lovelock’ is a textural piece, with dense clouds of sonic steam drifting dreamily overhead, colliding and reforming in slow-motion - it clocks in at just over 22 minutes but seems much longer. ‘Further’ has the kind of loping 5/4 groove and repeating bluesy bassline that Alice Coltrane et al specialised in in the 1970s, and which has returned to vogue rebranded as ‘spiritual jazz’. There are mellow organ and Morricone-style guitar overdubs, clanking percussion, and tinkly minor key piano, and the whole drifts pleasantly by for twenty minutes or so before fading away, though it could just as easily have continued for the same amount of time, or ended fifteen minutes earlier. The Necks occupy a space that’s all their own and this record will only enhance their reputation for uncompromising creative fearlessness.
Reviewed by Eddie Myer
