The Necks are an Australian experimentaljazz trio formed in 1987 by founding mainstays Chris Abrahams on piano and Hammond organ, Tony Buck on drums, percussion and electric guitar, and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar and double bass. They play improvisational pieces of up to an hour in length that explore the development and demise of repeating musical figures. Their double LP studio albumUnfold was named by Rolling Stone as "one of the top 20 avant albums of 2017."
History
The Necks were formed in 1987 in Sydney by founding mainstays Chris Abrahams on piano and Hammond organ, Tony Buck on drums, percussion and electric guitar, and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar and double bass. In 1983 Abrahams on keyboards and Swanton on bass guitar were founders of the Benders, a jazz group, with Dale Barlow and Jason Morphett on saxophones, and Louis Burdett on drums; which disbanded in 1985. Abrahams had formed the Sparklers in 1985, a dance pop band, with Bill Bilson on drums, Gerard Corben on guitar, Ernie Finckh on guitar, Melanie Oxley on lead vocals, and her older brother Peter Oxley on bass guitar. Abrahams left in 1987 before that group's first album, Persuasion. Buck had been a member of a number of groups: Great White Noise, Women and Children First, Tango Bravo and Pardon Me Boys; prior to forming the Necks. In 1986 Swanton had been a member of Dynamic Hepnotics. According to Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, the Necks "issued several albums of abstract, improvised, jazzy mood music." François Couture of AllMusic described how they "usually start playing a very basic melodic and rhythmic figure, and then keep going at it for an hour, gradually introducing microscopic changes and variations. Some critics have compared them to Krautrock groups like Can and Faust. Others find similarities in the works of minimalist composers like LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad, even Philip Glass." The band has been described as "offending against tradition for the past quarter of a century, mostly by occupying the spaces between accepted positions and obstinately refusing to obey genre rules". The group issued their debut album, Sex on the Spiral Scratch label in 1989. It consists of a single track of the same name, which is just under an hour long. Couture noticed that "The difference between Sex and the many other CDs they would record afterwards is the purity: The trio's hypnotic repetitive piece relies only on piano, bass, and drums; no electronics, extra keyboards, samples, or lengthy introduction." Aside from their work within the group each member has undertaken side projects, recording session work or as a touring band musician. Abrahams formed an ongoing duo with Melanie Oxley, which has released four "moody, emotive soul/pop albums" from Welcome to Violet to Blood Oranges. All three have worked for Stephen Cummings, both collectively and individually.
Live performance
Geoff Winston of London Jazz News described how "Each performance by begins with a blank page which one of the trio will start to fill in to commence the journey, an uninterrupted set of around forty to sixty minutes. There are no rules, no agreements about who will take that lead and about how the discourse will evolve. The only criteria that apply are those of their own impeccably high standards." Typically a live performance will begin very quietly with one of the musicians playing a simple figure. One by one, the other two will join with their own contributions–all three players independent yet intertwined. As the 'piece' builds through subtle micro-changes, the interaction of their instruments creates layers of harmonics and prismatic washes of sound that lead some to apply the genre label 'trance jazz'. Their live performances can be challenging for those expecting a conventional musical experience. The Quietus Kate Hennessy found that "any Necks' show is a make or break experience. Some find it cathartic, others buckle and ever the twain shall chafe in the washout. The trio's routine is to play two improvised sets using just piano, double bass and drums: one set relatively calm; the other dispensing sound of escalating intensity for a long hour. Jazz by name but not by nature – if jazz denotes songs that spark at intervals into fine displays of musicianship and tricky timing, after which one claps, drinks, and feels pretty good about the world and the talent in it. No, The Necks plunge listeners to the kinds of violent psychological depths few other bands can achieve at all, let alone all acoustically."
The band won two ARIA awards for the albums Drive By and Chemist. The Necks received the inaugural Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the 2019 Art Music Awards.
