Drone Records

NECKS, THE - Vertigo

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: ReR Megacorp RER NECKS 12

Release Year: 2015

Note: the NECKS are a Jazz-band but if you like 'handplayed' floating drone & ambient expanses with rich details its difficult to not being seduced by them... 'Vertigo' sounds especially open, fluent, atmospheric... "always a lush, patient, slow build, all texture and mood, super dynamic, but in a way most bands can't pull off, just bass drums and piano, their sound dense and dark, doleful and lovely" [Aquarius Records]; limited vinyl version, Side B ends in a lock groove; non-sealed covers!

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00

More Info

"The release of a new Necks album is always news. This is our 12th to date - and their 18th. While most ensembles are driven by personalities, the Necks are powered by an idea. A very large and simple idea - which now seems completely obvious…. but only because the Necks thought of it and made it work. Now their pleasure (and ours) is sequentially to re-imagine and explore that idea – the prime directive of which seems to be to be that each unfolding step and every passing detail of any performance be allowed to evolve organically out of the musical conditions established at its moment of departure. In other words, we are in the territory of chaos and catastrophe theory; of hurricanes and butterfly wings… And, since one can never step twice into the same river, each beginning has led to wildly unpredictable and variant outcomes; and imperceptibly: you never hear the changes until somehow they have already happened. “We end up, Lloyd Swanton writes, ‘in a very different place from whatever our initial notion … had been.” In the case of Vertigo, we are dropped straight into an almost Feldmanesque musical universe, in which sounds - seemingly disconnected - are already there; creating space rather than inhabiting it. Then, without trying, they mutate. Not mechanically and not according to any pre-determined process - because it’s always clear that what we hear is being played by human beings; that it’s music. A special kind of music that is not pushy or demanding or demonstrative, but rather co-operative, spatial, ambiguous. A music that leaves room for its listeners." [label info]

www.rermegacorp.com

"Die unvergleichlichen THE NECKS mit dem nunmehr 18. Album ihrer 28-jährigen
Karriere. THE NECKS haben etwas geschafft, was nur wenigen Künstlern gelingt: einen singulären
Stil zu kreieren, dabei eine ganz unverkennbare eigene Handschrift zu entwickeln und doch
mit jedem neuen Album nicht einfach bewährte Rezepturen neu aufzukochen, sondern durch
feinfühlige Neujustierung der Parameter neue Nuancen zu offenbaren. CHRIS ABRAHAMS
(Piano), TONY BUCK (Drums) und LLOYD SWANTON (Bass) setzen auch auf ihrem neuen Album „Vertigo“ den Maßstab sehr hoch an. Der prägende repetitiv-hypnotisierende Klangfluss
aus leichtfüßig swingendem (Post-)Jazz, repetitiven Grooves à la JAKI LIEBEZEIT (CAN) und elektronischen Sounds, der viele ihrer alten Alben prägte, ist auch auf dem aktuellen Album zu hören. Elegant und subtil erschafft das Trio aus Australien hier abermals ein Meisterwerk. Wie kaum einer anderen Band gelingt es den Musikern, dem Hörer einen „Weg“ vorzugeben, ihm aber genug Freiraum für eigenes Hören und Interpretieren zu lassen. Ganz große Kunst!" [Broken Silence]

"We've lost count at this point of how many albums The Necks have released, but we haven't lost sight of the way they have remained on top of their game with each and every release. There is no such thing as a bad or mediocre release by Austrialian avant-jazz minimalists The Necks. Vertigo keeps the streak alive, and in many ways it's one of the darker releases by The Necks, filled with hypnotic and pulsating piano and soulful free-jazz like percussion. In one 43 minute track they remind us once again they are among the most intense and talented music makers on this planet!" [Aquarius Records]