The ritual performances that The Necks perform at The Corner Hotel around about this time of year has always been something intriguing, considering the venue hardly ever gets people to sit down for a performance for any of the shows it puts on. It just seems as if there is this ‘block’ where an exception to the rule occurs where an older crowd (with a good mix of younger faces) can just take over, sit their butts down and get swooped over the experimental jazz sound that The Necks create.
With no support, the outfit presented two sets of music (once again another ritualistic trait of the trio). It probably more was an ocean of rolling soundwaves rather than music however. The trio seem to have this sense of hypnotism when performing their slow, rigid tone of sound scattering amongst the room. The first set was coated with very small motifs from all instruments that augmented as the minutes rolled on by. Chris Abrahams playing three or four notes over and over until he probably got tired of that and quietly moving onto softly touching a large trill of notes culminating in crescendo made for intriguing viewing. Especially when that crescendo became rollocking aural bell curves.
Bass player Lloyd Swanton decided to take a rough and repetitive playing style, playing with his strings like they were the enemy. Trying to make a somewhat dissonance to the piano, it resisted halfway through the stream of music to rhythmically meld as one.
The most mesmerising of the three musicians though had to be Tony Buck. He is a free-flowing machine of thought and wonder. A ringing bell that he shook for about thirty minutes permeated the first set with this amazing sense of suspense. His other hand was preoccupying itself with percussive instruments that had been hit and played around him in a disorganised noise. After fifty or so minutes, this dark piece finished and all wash of that sound became clean. It feels odd to describe, but it felt like a purgative experience.
The second set/piece of sound explored a more jazzy upbeat style of sound for a slightly shorter time than the first. Abrahams became more playful in his improvisation, expressing a more ‘happy’ beat with his playing. Once again though Buck had this absolute insane lightness to his percussive playing. He was literally forming shapes with his fast motioned hands, hypnotising eyes with his cymbal crashing.
If there is anything more unique in the live music scene that can be seen as a credible performance, it would take a lot of legwork to usurp The Necks tonight. Some would hesitate to call these two sets by the trio music, but it certainly was an immersive experience.
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