the necks - nummy num krautjazz goodness, or frothy australian piffle?

go to hell.

"Num num" cannot be applied to krautjazz however good it is.

and why not?

Oh, and I don't see why one would have to be doing much else while listening. I can use this just like I use all my other music.

(i have now just ruined this cd for josh.)

coming to Los Angeles (REDCAT) in February what what

Happy new year?

i fucking hope so, ned

Playing on Brian Turner's show on WFMU in a couple of hours.

Tony Buck really kicked out the fucking jams during their piece in Knoxville Saturday night.

wtf this just ended?

No, BT's show just started 15 minutes ago. I don't know exactly where the Necks performance is going to place within the 3-hour show.

starting now

yes! thanks for the tip

coooool, this is sounding great.

that was fucking awesome to put it mildly. I hope I can catch them live in May

yeah that was very good

going to see them tonight at le poisson rouge.

(also interested to check out poisson rouge, haven't been there yet.)

jealous

I saw stars of the lid there. the venue is, uh, ugly... but the place has plenty of seats and its pretty cozy. nice atmosphere for a sotl show. would go back.

wanted to go to the necks show tonight but I'm sick. :-/

I just came back from their SF show-- a friend described the effect as a "time warp"-- I agreed, but still kind of felt a bit let down for reasons I can't put my finger on. It was as if they began playing a song that they never had any intention of finishing... an hour's tour of the intros to half a dozen tunes. I think it didn't help that I had most recently listened to "Drive By" and somehow thought that they would play that sort of material.
I was impressed by their ability to sound like more than 3 people. The music did sort of wash over you, and as an experience was interesting overall.

Heard the Boston show- it was one of the best things I've heard in years. Very much in the vein of "Aether." Everyone I went with was blown away. Good enough to inspire me to write on the internet.

i liked the nyc show, but i wanted it to go on a little longer. i felt like they really only hit their peak about 10-15 minutes before the end. i didn't mind how long it took to get there -- there was a lot of good stuff in the opening 30-45 minutes -- but if they'd sustained it for another 10 minutes or so it could have been mind-blowing instead of just pretty cool.

anybody record that WFMU performance?

No need, it's archived.

so, i had forgotten about this band until they were brought up in the Terre Thaemlitz/DJ Sprinkles thread, oddly enough...and i've been listening to 'Drive-By' just about every day since then.

should i get Hanging Gardens next? what say you, necks fanatics.?

Go for Chemist if you liked Drive By

You can't go wrong with any of them, but I'd recommend Hanging Gardens if you liked Drive-By.

Drive By is pretty awesome iirc thank you to that thread

Drive-by is head and shoulders above most of their other stuff, imo. Their masterpiece. And i really like most of the other stuff.

The next best is Aether but that's totally different

new alb out i understand. how is it?

Guitarish by all accounts. Curious to hear it.

love this band but this is one of the most uncomfortable thread titles of all time tbh

Guitarish by all accounts. Curious to hear it.

now i really want to hear it.

http://mapsadaisical.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-necks-silverwater-rer/

A little guitar drops in just before 30 minutes in. Very odd to hear. Otherwise it sounds like The Necks. Strange insect percussion rattles. Double bass groove. Amazing drum textures. Big drum patterns that swallow everything else. Awesome fucking band.

Still curious, but man I was hoping it was acoustic guitar.

looking forward to hearing this

Anyone seen their current tour? Is it worth driving 2h (possibly/probably) by myself?

What other music in the world is anything like "Aether"?

Not really, that I know of; bits of The Necks sound a bit like other artists (Aether sounds a bit like Stars of the Lid, as mentioned above), and bits of other artists sound like The Necks (In A Silent Way by Miles Davis, Future Days by CAN, bits of Beak maybe). A couple of bits of the Swans album almost (but other bits REALLY NOT). Some Tortoise. You might get a similar vibe off some Neu. There might be lots of minimal jazz acts out there that I don't know of, I suppose.

I'd suggest just getting as many Necks albums as you can; I've got about eight now, I think.

Bits of Boredoms, maybe.

strange place for snow - est
changing places - tord gustavsen trio
6 - supersilent

I thought baout mentioning est but I feel like they were more 'straight jazz' than Ronan's probably after. Ditto the likes of Polar Bear.

yeah I've been looking for something that sounds like "Drive-by" forever.

Chemist and Hanging Gardens might be your best bets.

yeah i guess miles davis is the only other thing i listen to that is like the necks. i don't mind actual jazz suggestions, but am also curious about people inhabiting the weird space that the necks do.

will check out some of the above recs.

Very pissed i missed the gig at VU the other day, was flattened from FN6. Supersilent are the band i listen to in this vein the most, theyre playing with john paul jones soon which should be awesome. In a more classical direction the arpeggios in the piano work always reminds me of hans otte

yeah really annoyed also... i just couldn't afford it, i should have bought a ticket before being stuck into diploma down-payments.

they prob will be back tho.

Loooooooove these guys, collecting everything, and since I am in the NW USA I will most likely never see them *sob*

>are there other bands that sound like these guys?

Talk Talk's Laughing Stock sounds like a starting point for a lot of Necks stuff. If you took passages from LS and stretched them out for 20 minutes you might end up with "Chemist", or "Drive-by" if you kept stretching

it's not often mentioned along with their best, but "Silverwater" is maybe my second favorite after "Drive-by"

I think Silverwater and Mindset are absolutely the best!! After that comes the 4 disc live box! And then probably Aether and Drive By. I especially love how Buck has been using more and more interesting percussion effects nowadays. Some recent live things I have downloaded/ripped show them continuing along these lines and I couldn't be more pleased.

I know of no one who sounds similar apart from the aforementioned Miles album In A Silent Way and perhaps the Circle album Tower.

man, can we get this thread title changed. love the necks, hate the title.

maybe some matthew shipp stuff?

this live tortoise bootleg i have?

i haven't listend to Mindset very much! gonna pull that one out again.

Portico Quartet are rather Necksy. (Necksesque?)

So glad this thread popped up, listened to townsville this morning on the way to work and it blew the hangover clean out of me. They are playing here a couple of times a year these days so I live in hope. There really should be more bands like these guys, I would be one of them if i had the chops

Yeah, will cosign with Portico Quartet and strongly recommend the current album (eponymous, I think) to Ronan.

strange place for snow - est

Thank you for this. Where has this record been all my life??

Oh man if you like that run out for Tuesday Wonderland.

On it. Thanks! I think I may have to become an EST completist...

Easily done, sadly - the main guy died a few years ago, when he was still only in his 40s.

That sucks. Such beautiful music.

How do you rate Somewhere Else Before? That one's super cheap on Amazon...

Holy shit. Finally gave "Townsville" an attentive listen. Those last ten minutes are sublime.

Wiki tells me somewhere else before is a compilation. Afraid I don't know it. Know falling, snow, and wonderland best - all very good.

Sex is one of the greatest longform grooves in any genre ever

Yes

hell yes- the first album I heard by them and still the best imo

I've never heard Sex.

Sex (not, uh, sex) has never done much for me. it's pleasant but it never gets into that really sublime "zone" that The Necks seem to achieve in their best stuff. it just kinda goes along.

Piano, Bass, Drums seems to go for something similar and seems better to me.

I've heard PBD, albeit years ago, and it was pretty awesome.

i sort of despair at most likely never getting to see these guys live.

just saw that they're playing a 3 day residency at cafe oto in november

Sex (not, uh, sex) has never done much for me. it's pleasant but it never gets into that really sublime "zone" that The Necks seem to achieve in their best stuff. it just kinda goes along.

I had similar thoughts when I first heard it, in comparison to Hanging Garden, Drive By and PBD it sounded more unvaried and maybe too polite. Since then I have grown to love this baby, it really swings in a Necks type manner when it gets going and familiarity makes you want to keep coming back. No crap sex puns intended.

whatta tease - thought this was revived due to news of a new album

That's what happens when you answer 7 month old posts on The Necks!

News of a new album:

The Necks announce one track album, Open

Excellent news. Thanks Prof.

Can they really not get a US label to license these albums by now?

Still psyched for news of a new one though - thanks!

*googles "cafe oto"*

sigh. at least there's the new album to look forward to. single track 1 hour Necks albums are the best.

If I love the Necks, I should like Dawn of Midi, right? They're playing here in a month. Anyone seen the both of them live?

Both great live, don't miss that

I saw these guys at The Village Underground having never knowingly heard a note before in my life and after being astonished by the number of 50s-ish men in the audience wearing soft tweed jackets and nice scarves I buckled in and definitely felt like I was on some sort of drug stronger than the two cans of beer that were in me. On my way out I saw the merch table and was genuinely surprised to see CDs for sale as it genuinely didn't occur to me that there would be a point in recording their music because when you played it back it would be the same each time, frozen, which is kind of the opposite of what they do.

In some ways it feels like "outsider art" - despite some resemblance to other "jammy" or motorik or noise bands it doesn't really plug into any traditions of avant-garde music that I know of (I'm probably wrong about this, though)

The fact that they titled one of their CDs "sex" is hilarious and totally apposite

Though maybe "porn" would be a better title for something that freezes in documentary form a performance that's improvisational as a foundational principle

Sex is an all time great and your barren musings mean fuck all to me pal.

Thinking the band is great in the moment and having the opinion that the recordings might not capture that doesn't seem barren to me. The band is still great and the Sex LP is still great regardless.

It seems pointless to start a thread for Dawn of Midi since the album is eight years old and they're not an active group, but I've been listening to Dysnomia on repeat lately.