The Necks: Body

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 as the trio sees fit. Opening with a protracted meditation, wherein Abrahams conjures both calm and quiet as the rhythm section carries time on their subtle shoulders, the work moves along until about sixteen minutes in, when we enter a sort of electric woodlands, where Buck's cymbals and heartbeat thump-thump our only human connection until that too drifts from the mix.

Swanton's arching bow enters, if not menacingly then at least suspiciously, and we're adrift until it all cracks wide open again, the trio tearing away like a rock band loosed. Buck's guitar in scream mode. Abrahams banging away. Then a clatter of percussion and synth fuzz. As the minimalism evolves, so does the music's constant, organic wanderlust—meter, majors, and minors be damned. Like the aforementioned discs and 2017's feverish vinyl release Unfold (Ideologic Organ, 2017), The Necks is its own entity and no one else comes close.

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