feature photo: Camille Walsh Photography
As an enigmatic band out of Australia over the last three decades with a large cult following, The Necks have consistently made some of the most alluring but most hard to pin down instrumental music. Thirty-four years after their first release, they are going as strong as ever.
Travel represents their nineteenth studio album, but it’s a studio album that comes closest to being a ‘live’ album because these tracks come closest to reflecting unadulterated live tracking of improvisations in the studio, with only some mild subsequent edits. And this time it’s four, twenty-minute-ish tracks, a departure from the usual single, hour-long tracks. As such Travel is also a double-disc affair, also unusual for this band.
Getting four distinct performances is an abundance of new material from guys accustomed to offering them up one at a time, even if we were actually treated to three of them on the prior album, whose title seemed to highlight that fact.
But the band’s blueprint for organic minimalism remains the same, and improvisation is at the heart of that formula. Maybe ironically, because they can recycle the same approach to making a record over and over and yield different results each time. Travel — aside from the extended length — is an entity separate from other Necks albums, just as the other records in their canon stand alone.
Anyone seeking to settle the argument of whether or not The Necks is ‘jazz’ won’t get that resolved with Travel. Sure, Chris Abrahams does his jazzy flourishes on the piano, Lloyd Swanton lays down his insistent vamps on a standup bass and drummer Tony Buck always has a faint swing in his gait. But the resulting music doesn’t really follow the widely-accepted rules of jazz, because jazz moves fast; these lads are in no rush.
For the opener “Signal,” Swanton’s acoustic bass line — as is often the case — declares the riff that will stay with us for the next twenty minutes, but the steadiness is merely the foundation in barely-perceptible variations by Abrahams using the organ to set sonic washes and piano to insert that improvisational jazz element. His minutely subtle buildups gradually regulates that bass to the background but by that time it’s ingrained in your brain, anyway.
With “Forming,” Swanton is dancing on the single chord, and Buck is paint brushing so much of the audial imagery with toms, cymbal splashes and percussion, as Swanton saws his double bass to discreetly alter the procession.
Buck’s profile is even higher on “Imprinting,” where he constructs an insistently funky, almost jungle rhythm situated right in the middle while Swanton plays in that pocket on the left channel and Abrahams leaves precious notes on the right.
A churchly organ establishes the sacred mood for “Bloodstream,” and Swanton’s saws organically establishes a drone right alongside it. Buck’s rolling snare enters minutes later to complete the picture, punctuating with tom-tom and cymbal hits whenever a slight mood alteration is called for.
It probably goes without saying that if you like The Necks previous records, you’re going to like Travel, too, guaranteed. It’s a familiar sound but the songs will still take you on an engaging journey where you’re not sure beforehand where they wind up.
Travel is releasing on February 24, 2023 via Northern Spy Records. Get it from Bandcamp.
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