The Necks: Bleed

Quintessential world builders, what Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck and Lloyd Swanton create time and time again is peerless.

This of course extends to The Necks’ live experience as well; one that is simply something to behold. Abrahams, hunched over the Steinway seemingly exiled from Buck and Swanton as he anticipates their pulsing rhythms. The trio hit a frequency that unlocks a pathway to new possibilities, and how they conjure up this off-kilter majesty defies both belief and logic, capturing an energy that you want to bottle up and preserve.

Now in their fourth decade, rarely has The Necks released albums in successive years. Nineteen studio albums deep, in fact they’ve done this just twice before Bleed – their latest, which follows last year’s excellent odyssey, Travel.

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Whilst Travel saw the band adopt new methods of improvisation between the studio walls, Bleed is even more untethered. A single composition at 42 minutes, it’s The Necks creating something that’s like a pendulum swinging from one world to another.

Bleed starts by The Necks getting deeper into the world of minimalism. Abrahams’ piano slowly leading into Buck’s cymbal scrapes and Swanton’s singular bass note that creates a cloak of doom. From here, the stirring echoes of Buck’s cymbal washes and chimes move the piece from darkness to somewhere evoking the Australian shores from which The Necks were born.

It’s an odd juxtaposition; a warped sensation that suddenly sounds like music in a waiting room that leads from this world to the next. A tension that cuts through the liminal space with a wandering eeriness that The Necks have never explored.

From here Abrahams’ piano lifts the mood with something almost fantastical. It’s fleeting, as Swanton’s upright bass stabs suddenly guide his bandmates through dark portals, and it’s here where the Bleed really starts to come alive.

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Buck takes the lead throughout the backend of the piece. His percussion, thrumming with a similar energy to Robbie Avenaim’s performance alongside Abrahams and Oren Ambarchi on last year’s Placelessness. It’s percussion that manically searches and shifts, swallowing up every other facet. That is until the pendulum finally swings back to Abrahams who returns with the same uplifting piano line that pulls you back into the current world, concluding this long-form dreamscape.

Bleed encapsulates the trio’s live experience. Sound that washes over you, as colours almost override the sound itself. The Necks have been described as a lot of things, but what they do on Bleed is crystallise the idea of psychedelia. And with the doom-jazz aesthetic only they have assembled and only they can maintain, Bleed is the latest shift in The Necks canon, which continues to evolve with each passing year.

Bleed is out now via Northern Spy. Purchase from Bandcamp.