The Necks are, among other things, the absolute antithesis of a needle-dropping culture that would rather hear quick samples of songs via social media blasts or YouTube clips than sit patiently with a full album. They don’t do singles or songs with run times in the single digits. Formed in 1987 in New South Wales, Australia, the trio consisting of Chris Abrahams (keyboards), Tony Buck (drums), and Lloyd Swanton (bass) are more comfortable releasing albums where each side makes up an entire track as they expertly move through deliberately paced improvisation. With their latest, Disquiet, they’ve taken that concept to an exquisite extreme: four songs stretched across three CDs.
Disquiet is the Necks‘ 19th studio album and their fifth on the Northern Spy label, and they really are the epitome of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Their commitment to letting their improvisations breathe and stretch out as far as possible is something they’ve been practicing since their 1989 debut album, Sex, which features a one-hour-long title track that draws on the eerie tension of Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue. Subsequent albums followed along those same lines: songs moving past the one-hour mark with a unique brand of drone-like improvisational jazz.
The multiple discs that comprise Disquiet show that the Necks aren’t looking to change course anytime soon, even as they approach their 40th anniversary. The first disc is comprised entirely of the track “Rapid Eye Movement”, which clocks in at nearly an hour and heavily features Abrahams on electric piano and organ, with the gentle rumble and hiss of Buck’s drums and cymbals and Swanton’s bass lines, which provide a beautifully appropriate low end. The instrumentation and pacing recall another Miles Davis era, this time the early minimalist fusion of In a Silent Way.
Disc two features the dissonant, stuttering “Ghost Net”, with Buck’s drums providing an oddly crooked beat as organ and bass weave around the beat, creating a clatter that can be tough to get a handle on, but like the long-form phase shifting experiments of Steve Reich, the repetition and off-kilter time signatures soon become a knotty groove that the listener becomes helplessly (and blissfully) locked into. The result can best be described as post-rock meets 1970s spiritual jazz.
Two songs make up the final set. “Causeway” begins with a minor-key, heavily delayed guitar figure and continues with soulful piano noodling, some intense drum soloing, gurgling bass lines, and a gradual increase of tension before a calm coda ends the piece. “Warm Running Sunlight” ends the record in a reflective, meditative manner, with Buck’s cymbals practically the lead instrument, and the gentle droning of the instrumentation, particularly at this closing juncture, recalling the final section (“Psalm”) of John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme.
Disquiet is a genuinely absorbing series of luxuriously paced improvisations from the Necks, who have been doing this kind of thing for decades, and fortunately shows zero signs of slowing down. It’s intense but can also be deeply calming, satisfying the moods of those who like the lengthy works of early fusion as well as the progressive and post-rock experiments of more recent years. Patient ears and a knack for deep listening are a must, as the rewards are endless.