THE NECKS

Linhart Hall, 5 July 2014

The central concert of the festival’s last day was the appearance by The Necks, one of Australia’s cult bands. Rarely rehearsing and on stage spontaneously indulging in a lengthy, on-hour piece, the trio once again justified its special status in the realm of music at large (not just jazz).

Before starting to play, the three instrumentalists stand in silence behind or next to their instruments and stare into space. One forms the impression that they might never move and that nothing would happen for quite some time. The Necks obviously wait for a certain point in time comprehensible only to themselves, a point that sets them in motion. Everything happens slowly, actually very slowly, with the bassist, Lloyd Swanton, first setting a simple melodic line and after the initial few beats adding a tone or two. The mantra-like melody hovers suspended in the air that is heavy with anticipation, when – even more slowly – the bass is joined by Chris Abrahams’ piano and Tony Buck’s drums. Proceeding from the initial slowness, the trio starts adding more and more ornaments to the overall line and the composition’s axis concurrently and imperceptibly rotates from one instrument to the next, until a fascinating vibration is achieved, an all-but tangible flow of sound whose high density can be physically perceived. Similarly to the gradual evolvement into a unified fluttering, the piece’s decomposition is characterised by equal simplicity; its layers untangling and retreating back towards the simple forms from which it emerged. Slowly, with increasing passages of silence, a “block” of sound is grounded, quietened... In a suspense-ridden atmosphere, silence begins to envelop the band, whose voices are barely audible, and when – again very slowly – they finally stop, one realises that the silence that remained after the trio’s composition is entirely different to the one they started out from.


Mario Batelić

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Photo Nada Žgank