Necks - Aether CD
SKU
RER Necks2
The Necks are an improvising post-jazz trio from Australia, whose music is about as far from New Orleans as you could imagine. It's jazz that has been stripped of all its excess, and been re-forged out of the belly of minimal trance club culture. Hanging Gardens used a single rhythm held for an hour, with sumptuous chords occasionally rising and falling at huge intervals. For the first 30 minutes of Aether they've gone even further; they've dropped the rhythm altogether, and what remains is just a single chord which emerges and then fades into nothing, again and again. There are just small variations on electric piano, bowed double bass and electronics. At the 35-minute point a high-pitched keyboard pattern gradually emerges, and imperceptibly the group swing in to a Steve Reich inspired interlocking pattern, which builds to a climax. It finally subsides into a series of hypnotic cymbal washes. The Necks are drummer Tony Buck, double bassist Lloyd Swanton and pianist Chris Abrahams. Their records and live concerts are all made using the same process; they start with an improvising idea, and then transform the material ever so slowly as each piece progresses. It's a devastatingly simple but original approach, which calls for extreme concentration from the players, but for the listener the experience is as fluid and profound and as meditating on a sunset or watching the ebb and flow of the ocean. Records just don't come this pure, this focussed, this sublime. Reviews of Aether: "One of the most extraordinary groups on the planet...a fantastic achievement" The Guardian "Aether is a totally immersive experience. Although they're playing with just a single chord, its possible to believe that it's the only chord that ever existed, and any other music sounds hopelessly verbose. Brilliant." BBC Online "Be riveted by the drama of an improvised narrative as it unfolds in hyper slow- motion" The Wire "Their masterpiece. Call it New Age music with a brain, or an avant garde recording with sensuality, but above all listen" The Australian