The new release by the Necks was reviewed recently in Pitchfork. 755 bloody words and other than some vague references to genre, mention of label mates, there’s one reference of a musical nature - to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Sorta.
The rest of it is a lot of bubble and squeak about cascades or echoes or some such shit.
Pitchfork gives me gas. It’s a handy reference because they do review a lot of releases, but whatever critical paradigm they have is dominated and subverted by a lot of psycho-babble and allusion to extraneous nonsense.
So, down to brass tacks. Whatever else the Necks may be, they are a jazz ensemble, a trio. Drummer Tony Buck, bassist Lloyd Swanton and keyboardist Chris Abrahams are Aussies who’ve performed together since the Eighties. I don’t pretend to know their entire history, but their last two recordings have been compelling sets of group improvisation. Recordings I discovered in part thanks to the British online journal Quietus, which you should check out if you haven’t.
Their newest, Unfold, is comprised of four improvisations, in old school terms - one per side of a double album. Each is between fifteen and twenty-two minutes. The ‘sides’ are not numbered, the group preferring to let each listener sequence (or improvise) for themselves. Oddly, these selections don't exactly unfold, they begin and end; they're simply manifest.
While the Necks are nominally jazz, they stray into strange meters, no meter and other rhythmic turf a long way from swing.
Sometimes the Necks remind me of a less funk suffused version of Herbie Hancock’s “Mwandishi”-era groups (minus reed man Bennie Maupin and trombonist Julian Priester) especially on "Timepiece." I listened to Hancock's still revelatory Crossings back to back with Unfolds, and while they don’t exactly make bookends, they sounded sympathetic one after the other. Tempos and dynamics rise and fall in waves, this music is less about rhythm section/soloist arrangements than about collective communication, not unlike Miles Davis’s early Seventies ensembles, more about italics and punctuation than narrative.
Abrahams' keyboards especially evoke In a Silent Way Miles, but the Necks collective improvisation is taken to further extremes. While Miles abandoned songs (head, chorus, followed by 'solos'), the Necks forsake the separation at almost all times between soloist and rhythm section; they are either all rhythm section or no rhythm section. All cut live with a minimum of overdubs.
“Blue Mountain” quickly settles in to a groove of drums, bass, piano and organ, creating a mesmerizing calm. “Rise” on the other hand never does; strike a groove, that is. There are moments of peaceful beauty, but the dominant mood is unsettling and anxious. Bell-like piano evocative of Balinese Gamelan, percussion like jungle verité, and bass throbbing in its own space. “Overhear” seduces with organ runs, eerily reminiscent of Terry Riley circa Shri Camel.
The Necks demand a high tolerance for the kind of musical interaction that’s not dedicated to form, idiom, song, or a host of other musical constructions. It’s music to surrender to under the assumption that the musicians know what they’re doing and they’re going to take you somewhere interesting.
They do.
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