The Necks - Travel

2023 release

Over 34 years, Australian trio the Necks --pianist / keyboardist Chris Abrahams, drummer/electric guitarist Tony Buck, and bassist Lloyd Swanton -- have forged a compelling, exploratory, singular musical language. Often categorized as a "jazz piano trio," they've essentially reinvented the configuration in their own image with some of the most captivating, yet difficult to categorize instrumental music. Travel follows 2017's Unfolded in offering four sidelong cuts spread across a double LP. This music -- impeccably recorded and mixed by longtime collaborator Tim Whitten -- documents the trio's recent rehearsal habit: They start each studio encounter by playing an extended improvisation for roughly 20 minutes. These recordings are some of those improvs played live-to-tape, then appended with minimal post production edits and overdubs.

"Signal," is initially straightforward but wanders wide. Swanton's incessantly repetitive double bass vamp is the anchor. Buck hovers behind, pairing ride cymbal and rim-shots while syncopating the rhythm. Abrahams explores Middle Eastern and North African modalism on piano, and on organ, layers nebulous chord voicings onto mysterious note clusters. He and Buck continually circle back to ground themselves in Swanton's vamp. The flow becomes intense as Swanton pulls out a bow, and Buck adds snare breaks.

"Forming" is a slow brooding burn. Its single piano chord foundation is broken up by Abrahams into individual notes before reconstructing it in alternating resonant tones and timbral combinations. Buck whispers, cajoles and encourages with fluttering tom-toms and cymbal washes. Swanton abstractly, combines harmonic drones with dark, taut chords. At nine minutes, Abrahams' right hand pointillistically vamps directly from them. He cascades around Buck's beats, creating an alternate, dynamic. "Imprinting" finds the players disguising the organic sounds of their instruments initially. As Buck builds a circular ceremonial pattern with low-tuned tom toms, Swanton's arco bass sounds akin to a muted cornet. Abrahams almost indecipherable electric piano notes slide in then commingle in a counter vamp of fat, shimmering chords, layered inside a noirish sounding Hammond B-3, producing a wealth of tonalities for the trio to investigate. Strangely, it resembles Jon Hassell's Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism, and the latter half of Miles Davis's "Shh/Peaceful" simultaneously. Closer "Bloodstream" commences with an organ fugue over a seemingly breathing arco bass drone. Abrahams begins comping on piano, running through blues and modal postbop, then threads in a bounty of spooky, almost otherworldly organ. Buck enters at six minutes with thunderous, rolling snares. He drops out, allowing Abrahams to assert harmony, before the drum kit returns with thudding tom toms, and crisp, reverbed cymbals. Swanton adds electronic treatments to his droning bass. Buck's addition of a warmly distorted electric guitar adds ballast, texture and poignancy.

Despite the change in m.o. Travel is very much a Necks album and lines up seamlessly with the trio's vast catalogue. It blossoms with new ideas, fluid spontaneity and fresh ideas. For newcomers curious about the longstanding trio's music, Travel is a truly excellent place to begin.

Thom Jurek  AMG