“A cult band”, “unique music”, “the best trio on Earth”, “one of my favourite bands” – it is hard to find an article about The Necks that does not use these or similar phrases. The Australian musicians have been persistently working on their one-of-a-kind, hard-to-define music for forty years. It draws from many sources – modal jazz, minimalism, free improvisation, ambient, krautrock, gamelan and pop – and the associations that its elements evoke are endless.
The trio was formed in Sydney in 1987, but its members – pianist Chris Abrahams, double bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Tony Buck – had known each other before. The first two had once been members of The Benders, and Buck had worked with saxophonist Sandy Evans, among others. The band’s first album, Sex from 1989, was released shortly afterwards, offering what The Necks are known for to this day. It contains an hour-long improvisation, gradually developing, intensifying and repetitive. There were departures from this formula on subsequent albums – Next and the soundtrack to The Boys featured songs lasting only a few minutes. Whereas on the last four albums, the trio offers improvisations of around twenty minutes, i.e. long enough for each of them to appear on one side of a vinyl record.
The artists do not perform scored compositions, they do not even use sketches. They usually start with an inconspicuous motif, timidly played sounds of a piano, double bass or drums. At a certain point, a change occurs: the initial phrase is transformed, the part of another instrument is superimposed on it, and the overall sound image gradually thickens. The Necks’ music evolves slowly, and the subsequent stages of the development of their improvisations are spread over long minutes. It sometimes seems static, but it is animated by micro-movements, micro-events, the intertwining of which is sometimes so condensed that it is difficult to discern the intriguing processes taking place within it.
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