Biography
The Necks operate as a piano trio based in Sydney, Australia, yet resist standard classification. Avoiding both jazz and rock idioms, the group has followed one unchanging method across every recording and concert since its inception. Pianist and occasional organist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton, and drummer Tony Buck open each performance or session with a lone, straightforward melodic and rhythmic motif that slowly mutates over long durations. Subtle shifts in tone, volume, electronics, and texture, paired with restrained harmonic movement, enter incrementally. By the time any piece concludes, the music has become something unrecognizable from its start, even as its foundational elements persist. While listeners have linked the Necks to Krautrock ensembles such as Can and Faust, along with composers including LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, the trio occupies its own distinct territory. Across the hypnotic, repetitive pulses of 1989's Sex, the fluid interplay of synthesizer and piano on 2003's Drive By, the somber, fractured, and at times explosive passages of 2017's BODY, and the roaming textures and pulses of 2023's Travel, the band avoids repetition in its output. They issued Bleed one year afterward.
The Necks originated in Sydney, Australia, during 1987. The founding members—pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton, and drummer Tony Buck—have stayed constant despite maintaining separate and active careers. Abrahams works as a respected session keyboardist, has issued several solo piano recordings, composes for film and television, and joined Midnight Oil on a worldwide tour in 1993. Swanton remains a sought-after jazz session bassist who appears regularly at festivals; his résumé includes stints with the Benders, founding the Catholics, and supporting Stephen Cummings and Sting. Buck concentrates on avant-garde settings through numerous partnerships and side projects, among them collaborations with Otomo Yoshide and Keiji Haino, as well as the trio PERIL and the klezmer-punk outfit Kletka Red.
Spiral Scratch issued the Necks' first album, Sex, in Australia in 1989 as one continuous 56-minute piece. Their follow-up, Next, also came out on Spiral Scratch in 1990 before the band reissued it months later on their own Fish of Milk imprint; that record contained six contrasting tracks that applied the same improvisational principle as the debut. Around this period fans began referring to the style as "Necks music." On Aquatic the trio increased the electronic presence and returned to the single extended track spanning two sides of an LP. By the release of 1998's Piano Bass Drums the group's approach had solidified into a permanent framework.
Private Music brought Sex to American listeners in 1996, marking the Necks' initial North American release, though it produced limited impact there. European audiences responded more readily, prompting the group to begin yearly tours on that continent. Both Piano Bass Drums and the soundtrack to Rowan Woods' film The Boys earned Australian award nominations in 1998. The more propulsive, near-space-rock energy of 1999's Hanging Gardens expanded their reach, leading to a debut American tour in late 2001; that same year the British avant-garde label ReR Megacorp took over its distribution. A second North American tour in 2002 accompanied the release of Aether, regarded as the group's studio pinnacle. Drive By appeared in 2003 and received the ARIA Music Awards Best Jazz Album honor in 2004.
Later releases—Mosquito/See Through (2004), Chemist (2006), Silverwater (2009), and Mindset (2011)—continued to attract recognition for delivering inventive variations on the trio's core riff-based method. Open arrived in 2013, and its 2015 successor Vertigo both revived the extended single-track format of earlier recordings. The double album Unfold, issued in 2017 on Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label, presented four non-sequential tracks, each functioning as an independent suite. During summer 2018 the group released BODY on Family Vineyard, again employing one long improvised piece. Following tours across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and portions of North America, the Necks delivered Three in 2018, a set of three contrasting tracks that examined different aspects of their sonic language; the album's range of timbres and forms provides an overview of the immersive world the trio has developed through recordings and performances since the 1990s. Five years later, after three years partly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the band returned with Travel in 2023. Their nineteenth studio album (twenty-first overall), it captured the practice of beginning each studio day with a twenty-minute improvisation; spread across four LP sides, the resulting music ranks among their most ecstatic and engaging work to date.
In an uncommon move, the Necks issued Bleed the next year, a solitary forty-two-minute piece that conveyed the quiet beauty of decay and spatial resonance as a singular entry in their discography.
The Necks originated in Sydney, Australia, during 1987. The founding members—pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton, and drummer Tony Buck—have stayed constant despite maintaining separate and active careers. Abrahams works as a respected session keyboardist, has issued several solo piano recordings, composes for film and television, and joined Midnight Oil on a worldwide tour in 1993. Swanton remains a sought-after jazz session bassist who appears regularly at festivals; his résumé includes stints with the Benders, founding the Catholics, and supporting Stephen Cummings and Sting. Buck concentrates on avant-garde settings through numerous partnerships and side projects, among them collaborations with Otomo Yoshide and Keiji Haino, as well as the trio PERIL and the klezmer-punk outfit Kletka Red.
Spiral Scratch issued the Necks' first album, Sex, in Australia in 1989 as one continuous 56-minute piece. Their follow-up, Next, also came out on Spiral Scratch in 1990 before the band reissued it months later on their own Fish of Milk imprint; that record contained six contrasting tracks that applied the same improvisational principle as the debut. Around this period fans began referring to the style as "Necks music." On Aquatic the trio increased the electronic presence and returned to the single extended track spanning two sides of an LP. By the release of 1998's Piano Bass Drums the group's approach had solidified into a permanent framework.
Private Music brought Sex to American listeners in 1996, marking the Necks' initial North American release, though it produced limited impact there. European audiences responded more readily, prompting the group to begin yearly tours on that continent. Both Piano Bass Drums and the soundtrack to Rowan Woods' film The Boys earned Australian award nominations in 1998. The more propulsive, near-space-rock energy of 1999's Hanging Gardens expanded their reach, leading to a debut American tour in late 2001; that same year the British avant-garde label ReR Megacorp took over its distribution. A second North American tour in 2002 accompanied the release of Aether, regarded as the group's studio pinnacle. Drive By appeared in 2003 and received the ARIA Music Awards Best Jazz Album honor in 2004.
Later releases—Mosquito/See Through (2004), Chemist (2006), Silverwater (2009), and Mindset (2011)—continued to attract recognition for delivering inventive variations on the trio's core riff-based method. Open arrived in 2013, and its 2015 successor Vertigo both revived the extended single-track format of earlier recordings. The double album Unfold, issued in 2017 on Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label, presented four non-sequential tracks, each functioning as an independent suite. During summer 2018 the group released BODY on Family Vineyard, again employing one long improvised piece. Following tours across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and portions of North America, the Necks delivered Three in 2018, a set of three contrasting tracks that examined different aspects of their sonic language; the album's range of timbres and forms provides an overview of the immersive world the trio has developed through recordings and performances since the 1990s. Five years later, after three years partly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the band returned with Travel in 2023. Their nineteenth studio album (twenty-first overall), it captured the practice of beginning each studio day with a twenty-minute improvisation; spread across four LP sides, the resulting music ranks among their most ecstatic and engaging work to date.
In an uncommon move, the Necks issued Bleed the next year, a solitary forty-two-minute piece that conveyed the quiet beauty of decay and spatial resonance as a singular entry in their discography.
Albums
Singles
