New Necks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/mixingitljf.shtml

i think part 2 of this is at least as good as anything they have released commercially.

Guardian article for anyone who is interested (almost no one).

It's spacious, but focussed. Reminds me of Talk Talk a lot. What should I get next?

as for the Necks, get "Drive-by"...their finest hour (literally speaking)...

I didn't know about this one before the Wire's end of year list:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/4b4h/

Has anyone heard it?

it's good...totally different from their other stuff, but still unmistakably the Necks...back to the one-long-song format...a little less hypnotic than, say, Drive-By, but it's very twinkly/chiming/glassy...stellar as usual...

so is anyone going to see them at the vortex in london?

i'm going to see them at the city halls in glasgow.

i'm off live music but i have waited a long time to see them.

here's the current tour, starts in glasgow.

May
UK
Sun 11 GLASGOW,
City Halls, Recital Room
www.glasgowconcerthalls.com

Box office (+44) 0141 353-8000

Mon 12 NEWCASTLE/GATESHEAD,
The Sage Gateshead
www.thesagegateshead.org

Box Office (+44) 0191 443 4661

Tues 13 NORWICH,
Arts Centre
www.norwichartscentre.co.uk

Box Office: (+44) 01603 660352

Thurs 15 BRIGHTON FESTIVAL,
Manic Organic at Brighton Dome
www.brightonfestival.org

Sat 17 BRISTOL,
The Cube
cubecinema.com

Sun 18 COLCHESTER,
Arts Centre
www.colchesterartscentre.com

Box Office: (+44) 01206 500 900

Mon &
Tues

19/ 20 LONDON,
Vortex Jazz Club

EARLY SHOW - SOLD OUT

FEW TICKETS LEFT - standing only

Monday 19th
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL - one set only
Tickets: £9.00
Doors from 10.30 pm

Cafe/bar downstairs serving pre-gig espresso and black sambuca shots: or come earlier for dinner.
Showing films by Tony Buck

www.vortexjazz.co.uk

Tickets:

Box Office: (+44) 020 7254 4097

Or - www.wegottickets.com
and search on "The Necks"

Wed 21 LIVERPOOL,
Philharmonic Hall
www.liverpoolphil.com

Box Office: (+44) 0151 709 3789

sigh...they never seem to play in the States...

New Necks is one of my secret band/album names!

hanging gardens is still one of the dopest records ever

speaking of (Tony Buck), anyone heard the new Heaven And rec out on Staubgold? from what I ca tell on myspace it's pretty good. not really Necks-y but still interesting.

anyone going to see them in bath? tempted to make the trip...bargain for a tenner too.

I'd love to see them but the location and timing isn't great. This mention here isn't on the website and looks better for me; http://www.allgigs.co.uk/search/tourdates/55463/The_Necks-1.html

yeah that is better...would prob have to stay in bath by time gig is over.

anyone seen them live before? seems like it'd be good to have some chemical aid beforehand

I've seen them a few times, sober or on a couple of drinks, and you absolutely don't need anything to be swept away in delight or wonderment, or stop thinking at all and enjoy detached brain dancing at drones or rhythms. but if the surrounds are comfortable, seems like it'd be good is probably an entirely accurate estimation.

Saw them last year at Big Ears 2 -- the trio, and also the three of them plus Ned Rothenberg. There was another concert involving an ad hoc group of players doing a Necks-like set, Tony Buck on drums. Highly recommended. I'd skip the chemicals, but that's just me.

xpost: and the "two sets with an intermission" duration of their shows would suit that, if you did try.

check the venue though. last time I saw them, this year, was in a jazz club where 80% of the couple of hundred capacity stand behind a railing by the bar, while a few dozen sit at dinner tables in 80% of the floorspace = prob not conducive. a few years back at ATP, they played in the afternoon sun, a meter from the harbour, where the entire audience bar 8 people* lay down on the trimmed lawn and let the piano roll through the ground = potential zomg.

*halfway through, one of these 8 hugging the stage turned around and saw the rest of us, tugged his mate's sleeve, and promptly sat cross-legged.

yeah i mostly wouldn't bother with chems either these days, once a year maybe, but seems like you could have a bit of a transcendental experience with this band!

Played Drive By at our record club last night; went down very well. Just bought Mosquito / See Through too; every time I play a Necks album for the first time in a while, I end up buying another one.

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/the-necks-–-drive-by-–-round-10-nick’s-choice/

anyone going to the gig next month at THE BISHOPSGATE INSTITUTE, whatever that is

I opted for the date in Oxford at "The oldest custom-built concert hall in Europe" http://bit.ly/qH8mcm

Anybody fancy Leeds on November 25th?

yeah I'm going to both the London dates.

Harold Budd and Werner Dafeldecker should be great at those non-London shows, wish i could catch this tour.

Probably will go to the Bishopsgate Institute one, just making sure I am in town for the date.

How is Mindset? Been on a serious kick but I think I prefer the more 'live' sounding, less overdubbed stuff, like Sex and Piano Bass Drum, though I've yet to hear an album by this group I dislike. Still, wondering if the new one is worth a plunge, given that I find Drive By a little too maximalist and Aether a little too sleepy. Their records are expensive in the States.

these dudes are nothing if not consistent -- the new one is totally gorgeous.

yes! they might be my favorite band going.

has anyone heard any of these side projects? http://www.thenecks.com/shop/other

Don't know any of those but I can highly recommend Buck's project with Martin Siewert and Steve Heather, Heaven And (not listed there).

Can't wait to hear the new one.

Yeah thanks for the heads-up

What is the name of the new album?

Open

The Wire seemed to really like it. I'm just glad it's on a US label so I don't have to pay like $28 for this one.

Open is out today and let me repeat myself: it is totally gorgeous.

Yeah I listened to that a bunch of times when it was streaming. It is a cool journey for sure, gotta track down more by this band. My kinda thing.

yeah it's really good. I think it's important to listen loud. playing softly in the background you might thing it just passed on by and nothing happened.

Loud, this thing is amazing. On headphones, another experience entirely.

no you're right, at least with the field recordings on the new one. but there are others that are 100% live, like https://www.discogs.com/master/736129-The-Necks-Athenaeum-Homebush-Quay-Raab

I guess what I am really wondering is how often these guys practice, if it's regular, whether they run through these jams in advance of recording/performing, idk

again, this might be old understanding - but at one point i believe their practice was to record a first pass that was fully improvised, then do at least one overdub pass responding to that first recording

certainly some incredible communication is happening during their live sets

ty! would love to read an interview w/them abt this

There was a cover story on them in The Wire in 2023. Here are some excerpts:

There are, in effect, two different manifestations of The Necks. “We decided from the very outset to never try to replicate our live experience in the studio, and vice versa. We never play anything from our albums live. I always say we’re just not good enough musicians to be able to remember,” Swanton quips.

“Our live performances do tend to have, as a formal aspect of them, a crescendo or a feeling of things building, whereas our studio stuff eschews that,” muses Abrahams. “It’s very difficult to actually record a crescendo on an album and for that to be interesting after one listen.” For Buck, the distinction seems to be more about maintaining multiple avenues to expression: “I think we decided pretty early on, let’s keep these two different approaches happening to create this longform music.”

...

Equally important in their performances are the sounds the room itself can make – the unpredictable resonances and frequencies created by the acoustic architecture of the space. “I hear them as sort of sonic collisions,” says Swanton. “Chris put it incredibly well in an interview a few years ago – he said, ‘Sometimes I’m playing something on the piano and I can hear it’s triggering a sound in the room and so I start really working on that and the more I do it the more it’s creating a kind of a feedback within the room, but a controlled feedback, and then I decide to stop playing that and it keeps going and I realise it was never me doing it in the first place.’ I totally know that experience. Who is making that sound?”

“Sometimes there’s a kind of standing wave in the room,” observes Buck. “If it’s a problem, we can avoid it, but if it’s kind of cool, we can really exploit it and head towards it. These sounds can really influence how things unfold.”

Of course, in a recording studio, this kind of spontaneous audio event is simply not going to happen. “Most studios are designed to eradicate any kind of troublesome frequencies,” says Swanton. “And yet they’re the things that in our live show we’re going to home in on and actually try to accentuate and turn into something really interesting. So, a lot of the elements to take for granted in a live performance room have to be added electronically.”

Drawing on their early immersion in dub reggae, The Necks’ studio albums employ imaginative overdubs, dropping in and chopping out extra organ swirls, arco bass drones and flights of percussion into the flow of the music. “With digital recording,” Swanton continues, “we don’t even have to allocate a particular point in the piece for a motif. We can decide in the mix if it comes at the start, the middle or the end or is a recurrent motif. It’s really blurring the lines between composition, recording and improvising. It’s a combination of all three.”

very cool, thanks!

Hadn't listened to Three in ages so dug it out last night. Fantastic stuff, especially the opener Bloom.

Am I reading their past tour dates page wrong, or have they not played in the US in years?

Yeah they had a US tour booked for spring 2020 which got cancelled for obvious reasons and they haven't been back since.

causeway is amazing, also giving me the chills as people said about other tracks, just beautiful music. it is weird to listen to a new record by a band and feel it could sit in the pantheon with basically anything else, and most of their records are like this.

xpost Sucks to hear that. I don't know if it was their last tour here but I caught them in, IIRC, 2018 or 2019 in SF by chance -- a friend was visiting, plans for another event fell through, I did a random check and realized that they were playing that very evening. Officially sold out but we were able to cajole our way in (and paid full price) -- wasn't a standard venue, more a performance space, so we promised we had no problem sitting on the floor. A fantastic experience.

Sitting on the floor is arguably the best way to witness The Necks live!

I saw them once at a medium big room in Sydney supporting Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - we had GA standing tickets for the front section and I was worried it was gonna be shit - it was also a filthy hot day! - but luckily the vibe was surprisingly chill and we got to lie on the floor for the Necks set, excellent outcome from an unpromising setup

Just bought tickets for their Feb show here, I had to work last year so missed the show, keen for this one!

O man they are playing avoca beach theatre in feb.

huh that would be pretty cool

i just looked up their website for tour dates and found the tech specs. the drum specs are extremely specific! esp re heads

https://thenecks.com/tech-specs/

wow that's incredible

*Bass drum to have two coated Remo “Emperor” heads, front and back. Definitely NOT Remo “Powerstroke” or “Powersonic” heads or Evans heads.

Oh nice! Heads do make the biggest difference and I love the specificity, that makes a ton of sense. To me that says he wants to avoid rock drum sounds like the plague, nothing tight or short, just pure open tones.

that's really interesting! what other types of music would want those heads for the drums?

It's the jazz sound, which I think of as home base for the Necks (although it is interesting that he plays a 20" or 22" kick, not the 18" that's often used for jazz).

you know what they say, big kick... big drum!

This is very interesting! I love looking at tech specs / stage plots.

I'm not a bass player so maybe any bassists here can weigh in, but this seemed odd to me:

Bass Amp
Preferably Gallien Krueger 400RB, 800RB or 1001RB...

Bass Speaker
...NOT Gallien Krueger.

Then again, I guess I could see wanting a Fender guitar for backline but not a Fender amp

ha that stood out to me as well

I know nothing about how performing bands set up when away from home. Is this kind of set of requirements usual? I mean i get the piano would usually provided by the venue, and i yes ive heard of drummers using other bands kits...

Tony is bringing his own ankle shells i guess

yeah, this is fairly typical. Backline makes stage set-up a lot easier and makes it so bands don't need to lug every piece of gear they own to every venue, especially when the gear is fairly common. And also eliminates the voltage / power adaptor issues for bands traveling internationally

I saw them once at a venue in Boston (which was basically a big house so it felt like a living room show) and the band placement was exactly as depicted on their stageplot, as I recall it. Good on yer, Goethe Institute!

As far as audienceplot goes, I was the dot to the far left, just above the box.

The melancholy piano bit in Causeway gives me goosebumps, prob a bit more straight up emotional than some of their previous work.

This record is absolutely amazing, even by their standards. Hearing new things every time I listen.

Last two posts otm. The second half of "Causeway" opened up for me in a big way when I listened to it again last night. I think I underrated that one at first

Might be their best album, all things considered

Picked up this EP yesterday, which features all Necks in various permutations and sounds very nice on vinyl - I remember the song Benchtop getting a lot of radio play back in the day (the day being 1990)

The Chris Abrahams / Melanie Oxley LP Jerusalem Bay was going for a “Necks with vocals” thing and largely succeeds - features Lloyd Swanton but not Tony Buck (Toby Hall is fantastic tho)

While on the subject of Necks With Vocalists, here is a film documenting their 1987 tour of Mexico supporting cabaret-flavoured singer Jeannie Lewis where they all look indecently young

Wandering back into this album

The second half of "Causeway" opened up for me in a big way when I listened to it again last night. I think I underrated that one at first

im occasionally riding a ferry as the sun sets and ive started throwing this track on for the occasion and thats a nice combo alright

I'm still completely hooked on this record.

i have a wee controp -- i tried to listen to this while i was out for a walk and it was so boring i had to turn it off. is it possible that this band is often quite boring? i will accept that sometimes i don't have the patience to wait 15 minutes for them to get to the good part. i genuinely like this band and have seen them perform and was not bored -- maybe something has changed in me.

There is no good part, it's all the good part (or none of it is depending on your perspective). :) I mean it can absolutely be background music and sound like nothing at all, or like aimless plinking at their instruments for some pieces. But I do think they have a focus and commitment that comes through and rewards close listening too, that long-form attention to detail that's missing from a lot of both ambient and free improv.

This isn't my favorite Necks but I do like it a lot. 'Ghost Net' is like a magic eye picture, it either sounds like a 'shreds' video joke or like someone didn't line up the tracks in a DAW correctly, or like some deep west African-influenced 12/8 stuff if you actually try to follow the patterns. Referencing time and rhythm but not actually in time? Idk.

I've been putting on Warm Running Sunlight a lot just to bathe in the textures, it's nice to hear the low cymbal frequencies (and I feel like that's actually the focus of the track, it's like everything else is backing up the cymbals).

yeah it is odd, ghost net, listening to it and there's that slightly jarring feeling of wanting to flick it into time, tho idk if that's just the residue of dj brain.

the best time i had listening to this was on an early morning flight, eyes closed, with noise-cancelling headphones. just completely immersed.

xp that's a nice description of 'ghost net'. i've never not heard "long-form attention to detail" in their work. one thing that hasn't really opened up for me yet with this new one is hearing c.a. do his 'lots of staggered notes in sort of a constant stream' style of playing on the organ. i love it when he does it on the piano because of the acoustic resonance etc (townsville is basically this through the whole piece) but on the organ... idk it doesn't sound the same and i haven't opened up to it yet.

I've been putting on Warm Running Sunlight a lot just to bathe

first read-through i was like 'oh i need to bathe to this track too' haha

repetitive jazz useful to encourage ourselves to bathe

i can accept that it could be a me-problem at this time given that my overall life schedule is absolutely chaotic and most of my days and nights are spent bouncing from one place to another, constantly switching roles, and having little time for reflective listening of this nature.

album is great

This is what I wound up saying about it for Stereogum:

I like Australian trio the Necks’ music, but their hardcore fans’ rapturous devotion is weird to me. Their stuff is (not always, but often) so chilled-out and meditative that it’s impossible to focus on; it seems to waver right at the edge of perception, like a heat mirage on a highway. And that’s deliberate; their albums typically consist of single 45-60 minute tracks. Disquiet is different only in quantity; it’s a three-CD set. The first piece, “Rapid Eye Movement,” runs 57:07 and sounds like the beginning of Miles Davis’ “Shh/Peaceful” from In A Silent Way, before everything really gets started, stretched out for an hour. (It may also remind you of the Doors.) The more assertive “Ghost Net” runs 74:01. The third disc has two tracks, “Causeway” and “Warm Running Sunlight.” The former is the “single,” and has some really nice piano laid over a reverberating, precisely repeated guitar figure.

If we're gonna do "it's the same thing over and over" as a criticism I'm gonna say I'd expect better.

Yeah, I love this record. I still think Aether is my favorite of theirs, but the vibe here is immaculate— meditation punctuated by some revelatory moments.

LL, i do understand what you’re saying, though— I still don’t totally understand the plaudits for the Jeff Parker IVtet record from last year, which struck me as so boring that I literally deleted it from my devices to free up space

"Warm Running Sunlight" has some moments that remind me of this great record 'Punk Equinox' by Lori Goldston and Stefan Christoff. The instrumentation other than organ is different, but vibes wise it's there. https://dasatapes.bandcamp.com/album/punk-equinox

(Probably one of my top 5 of 2022!)

back to this. "rapid eye movement" is so juicy.

feels like a seance tbh

listening to this kept me in a benevolent and meditative state all morning at work.

Gonna start painting the front fence and maybe this will be the soundtrack.