Jazz Articles about The Necks

About The Necks

Album Review

Live performances by Australian free-improvising trio The Necks typically take the form of a single, slowly growing and morphing mass of sound. On recordings the musicians give themselves permission to sculpt the sound, so it is not a real-time document. Nevertheless their two previous albums Vertigo (Northern Spy Records, 2015) and Body (Northern Spy Records, 2018) both presented a single long track apiece, paralleling their live practice. This time the program is broken into three parts, each with its own ...

Radio & Podcasts

The Necks Live at BIMHUIS Amsterdam

by BIMHUIS
June 8, 2019

Endlessly fascinating, hypnotic improvisations on piano, double bass and percussion by The Necks, the Australian trio that achieved a world wide cult status.The Australian trio The Necks plays slowly unfolding, hypnotic improvisations that touch on all kinds of music, from Western minimalism to African trance and from to ambient to contemporary electronic music. Every other set of The Necks is another slowly unfolding improvisation based on the interaction between piano, bass and percussion.In the late 1980s ...

Album Review

The Necks: Body

by Luca Canini
November 19, 2018

Si potrebbe iniziare dicendo che il disco è il ventesimo (live esclusi) pubblicato dai The Necks in quasi trent'anni di carriera; oppure ricordando che il precedente, di disco, si intitolava Unfold, e che dal formato vinile (doppio) per Body il trio australiano ha deciso di tornare al caro, vecchio CD, ripristinando la regola aurea della traccia unica (stavolta da 56 minuti). Si potrebbe iniziare insomma dal più classico dei come-dove-quando, dalle circostanze, dai dettagli spicci che compongono ...

Radio & Podcasts

Ice, Ice, Baby

by Patrick Burnette
September 14, 2018

Mike's apparently random picks for this episode, whose release dates range from the mid-fifties to this very year, turn out to have at least one aspect in common: the artists involved illustrate different aspects of “cool." After detours exploring Michel Petrucciani's personal life and Mike's beef with British jazz critics, we wind things up by discussing a classic release from folkster Gillian Welch in our pop matters segment. Playlist Discussion of The Necks's album ...

Album Review

The Necks: Body

by Mark Sullivan
August 23, 2018

Their official biography calls The Necks “one of the great cult bands of Australia," which says more about their fan base than the music they play. But it's still not a bad place to start; certainly, the mesmerizing improvised, slow-moving sound they create together is not likely to attract a mass audience. Like most of their recordings and live concerts, Body is a single, nearly hour-long improvisation--but one with four distinct sections. The performance begins with Chris Abrahams' ...

Album Review

The Necks: Body

by Mike Jurkovic
August 13, 2018

Australia's greatest cult band, The Necks, has twenty albums to its creative and collective credit, amongst them Aether (Fish of Milk, 2001), Open (Fish of Milk, 2013) and Hanging Garden (Fish of Milk, 1999). Pianist/keyboardist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer, percussionist and guitarist Tony Buck create an ever-expanding rhythmic organism that constantly feeds off of itself with Body. The episodic, hypnotic, trance-like, 56 minute-plus title track never lags, its vortex of many-layered dynamisms bursting or blooming ...

Live Review

Bray Jazz Festival 2017

by Ian Patterson
May 9, 2017

Bray Jazz Festival Various venues Bray, Ireland May 28-30, 2017 There are just so many cultural events going on in Ireland over the May Bank Holiday weekend that it can be a bit of a head-spin deciding what to opt for. Roots music gatherings, literature festivals, classical recitals, a chamber music festival, traditional Irish folk festivals, lighthouse visits, theatre festivals and gigs galore, all vie for the punters' hard-earned coin. Happily, The Irish Times ...