What to do not to repeat yourself after thirty years of career and sixteen different studio albums? How to meet once again the expectations of listeners and musicians themselves?
Questions like these started to go through my head as soon as I heard that The Necks were working on a new album. The answer turned out to be quite simple and it was obviously the Australian musicians themselves who provided it: three, the perfect (and magic…) number.
“Three” is in fact the title of their new album (released on february 3rd in Australia and available march 27th in the rest of the world) everything in it seems to lead back to the number itself: the band members, the tracks and even the decades since the trio’s birth, as if to suggest that the time has come to take stock of the situation.
So it seems that the formula that the musicians chose not to repeat themselves and to sound fresh once again is… looking back! It means retracing their own experience and history, looking in the past for the future of the Necks.
If in the past the trio’s records often seemed to be born as a reaction to the previous album, in this case we could perhaps say, simplifying to excess, that “Three” is instead a reaction to the entire discography of the group.
So we’ll try to play a game: looking inside the album for elements that recall the past works, to understand if and how the Australian trio has succeeded, through the reinterpretation of their experience, to find yet another new way to lead them in the fourth decade of their artistic life.
So let’s start from the structure that, in Necks’ albums, is never a secondary detail. As mentioned at the beginning, the album is divided into three tracks lasting about twenty minutes each. A tripartite structure that is preferred to the format of the single composition/improvisation, to which the musicians are usually associated. The unique composition is actually present in many of the Necks’ works, though declined from time to time in different ways (think of the minimalist explorations of the first, archetypal, album “Sex” and how the same structure appears in albums like “Body”, as a composite suite in which you can see different themes linked seamlessly to each other), but it has to be said that in the last years the trio had resorted to the setlist of several tracks in records like “Unfold” and “Mindset” (but also “Vertigo” is in fact made up of several parts interspersed with a moment of silence that acts as a division into sides for the vinyl). The songs of the new album “Three” seem to combine the “reduced” duration used more in the more recent past with the research, based on minimalist and cyclic reiteration, which instead brings back to the first phase of the group; this research, reworked on the basis of the evolution of sensitivity and experience gained in thirty years, seems even more obsessive, but concentrated in a shorter period of time. To begin our game of references to the past, we can say that the structure of “Three” recalls that of “Chemist”: three pieces of similar duration, a more atmospheric one surrounded by two more rhythmic tracks.
The album begins with “Bloom” and it starts at full speed. The track is characterized by a frenzied groove structured on an implacable and elastic double bass and on the frantic polyrhythms of the percussions. Analyzing in depth this rhythm, you can see that the beats per minute are not actually high: to give the perception of a higher speed are in fact the percussions of Tony Buck that breaks down every beat and seems to play every sixteenth. In short, less speed, but more dynamic and a feeling of alienating speed. The reiteration and the exploration of the groove are the foundations of the piece, proceeding by microscopic variations, on which Abrahams’ piano is integrated: on the surface with modal touches that never resolve the melody and in the background with hypnotic ostinatos that act in an almost subliminal way. These piano figures are soon associated with phrasing and serpentines of synth, that at first are buried in the mix, but then become the protagonists in the finale along with concrete noises of plucked strings similar to bottles slamming.
The effect is paradoxical: that of a static, but at the same time dynamic track, which gives the feeling of not progressing, but actually feeds on a subtle dynamic that gives vitality and movement. You can perceive it particularly in the bass guitar where Swanton manages to formulate infinite and imperceptible rhythmic permutations of the few notes that constitute it.
There are several elements that bring us back to past works: the most evident is the rhythmic obstinacy that, despite the diversity of the rhythm, recalls that of “Hanging Garden”, while the sonic assault brings us back to “Rum Jungle” (first track of “Mindset”). The return to the groove that was missing for a long time in the Necks’ records brings us back to the first part of their career and in particular to the second part of “Aquatic”, while the tricks in the arrangement such as sound cells, patterns and noises that appear and disappear from the mix call in “Drive By”. While references to previous records are not lacking, the result not only sounds new, but also gives rise to the most exciting track in the repertoire of the australian trio.
The second track, “Lovelock” completely changes the tone: we pass from the rhythmic impetus and the material approach of “Bloom” to an elusive track. A sort of sound mass in a gaseous state that proceeds in cyclic waves (a structure that can’t help but recall that of “Aether”) that are never impetuous but rather caressing and frothy like those of a calm sea. Contrary to the previous piece in which the instruments were stratified to form a dense and cohesive material, though rich in nuances, in this case they work by subtraction. The piece is based on an almost immaterial base, in which each instrument is left the right space to breathe: Abrahams shows his delicate touch with ethereal chords combined with a tingling piano. Swanton works in an arrhythmic way with atmospheric and spectral sounds produced with the bow. Buck finally creates a nebulous substrate with brushed drum cymbals and a dreamlike use of bells. On this aerial structure, plucked double bass detachments that unexpectedly emerge and soft rolls that seem to really emulate the softness of the ridges of the waves, shake at times the apparent torpor of the track. “Lovelock” plays a very important role in the record precisely because it is in the middle of two rhythmic tracks, constituting a dreamy and liquid oasis, just as it was for “Buoyant” in “Chemist”. A song that seems to recall the angularity of “Vertigo”, the spaciousness of “Silverwater” and the ethereal and scattered sound of “Unfold”. But also the search for the relationship between sound and silence in works like “Aether” and “Mosquito/See through”. In short, it is a less flashy track than the previous one, but with a mysterious and subtle charm.
The final track, “Further”, is definitely the most accessible. It brings us back to a more rhythmic dimension, even if this time the groove isn’t looming and maddening, but rather relaxed, mellow and magnetic. And maybe never as this time the Necks seem not to be afraid to enchant not only through their usual weapons, but also through the melody. Drums and percussion still work on several levels: the drums cadence the beat anchoring it to the apparent fixity of the double bass, while percussion gives movement. Abrahams, on the other hand, builds the melody with painstaking patience, developing with the usual mastery a jazzy piano pattern that dispenses persuasive melodies. In the background undulating hammond chords, atmospheric sounds of double bass with bow, grainy chords and flickering guitar chords are the final ingredients of the piece.
Finally, the record also represents a synthesis of the different types of trance that Necks’ music is able to induce: if “Bloom” overwhelms the listener’s senses and “Lovelock” gives them respite, transporting them into an abstract and timeless space, “Further” carry them into a sweet and comfortable trance realized through a melodic hypnosis. It is no coincidence that it is the only track that gradually fade out, lulling the listener to the end of the journey.
And so once the jet lag is over, what can we say about this umpteenth adventure of and with the Necks? That it was exciting to look back and forward at the same time, but we are well aware that the journey is by no means over. It is in fact just another stage of a journey whose end we can’t see because, even if the destination is near, the road under our feet continues to change tirelessly.
