the necks - nummy num krautjazz goodness, or frothy australian piffle?

Guitarish by all accounts. Curious to hear it.

now i really want to hear it.

http://mapsadaisical.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-necks-silverwater-rer/

A little guitar drops in just before 30 minutes in. Very odd to hear. Otherwise it sounds like The Necks. Strange insect percussion rattles. Double bass groove. Amazing drum textures. Big drum patterns that swallow everything else. Awesome fucking band.

Still curious, but man I was hoping it was acoustic guitar.

looking forward to hearing this

Anyone seen their current tour? Is it worth driving 2h (possibly/probably) by myself?

What other music in the world is anything like "Aether"?

Stars of the Lid, maybe. Not much else.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this band are amazing, i downloaded hanging gardens yday then came in utterly wasted from the pub, i put it on and i kept thinking "this is amazing, what is this" and checking, then forgetting and then some other amazing part came on and i would check again...

so where to after hanging gardens???

You're not gonna go wrong with any of them really, may as well get all of them from that period in the early 2000s: Aquatic, Aether, Sex, etc. Drive By is a great one. Last year's Silverwater was sort of a left turn and pretty amazing.

Also Chris Abrahams has a kind of electro-acoustic record out this year which is warm and weird and completely mesmerizing.

Necks are winners

Yeah, just splash around anywhere, it's all going to be good.

saw these guys play a couple of times earlier this year and they were amazing, and totally different, each time

listening to "sex" now...it's amazing how instant this stuff is, considering how deep it is. it feels like i dunno, some modern baton carry for some of the stuff miles davis was doing on "get up with it". beautiful music!

See them live if you ever get a chance.

yeah do they tour much, i'm in london. had a look at their site but no dates listed. there seem to be a lot of live bootlegs about.

They were in the US in 09 for the Big Ears festival, but I don't think they're nonstop world travelers or anything.

Yeah, they all live in different countries now, so tend to only get together for gigs once a year I think. And more likely in Sydney than OS.

I replayed this TV session just a few hours ago! (ie overnight) You can only listen/mp3 at that link though.

Here's a full video-streaming concert shot seven minutes walk from my house though

they played in the uk last month or the month before. they were in glasgow, anyway.

ah yeah, looks like they did a (gruelling!) tour of Glasgow, London and Bexhill-On-Sea in June, while in London to do a theatre score

here's a bunch of youtubes of them jamming with Karl Hyde, Tomato, Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins, under Brian Eno's direction, at the Opera House last year.

saw them at the glasgow gig, part of some o/wise not v interesting jazz fest, and they were amazing. gig was at the tron theatre, excellent acoustic space w/out a stage, and they played two quite different 45 minute sets - as on record, the most spine-tingling part was the way that their music shifted tone/colour/rhythm almost imperceptibly over the course of the improvisation. also liked the fact that they put their obvious virtuousity in the service of the music, rather than their egos.

my memory is that they frequently played the pizza express in coptic street when they toured london - always thought it kinda strange to watch 'jazz' and nosh on a american hot, but maybe it works (lots of great jazz cats have played there). not having lived in london for four years, dunno if it is still a jazz venue, or if they still play there. but yeah, if you have the chance to see em - do so!

I saw them in Pizza Express once, kind of a weird place to see something like that...anyway they tend to play London around once every year or two so I'm sure they'll be back soon-ish.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet but this Tony Buck album is full of goodness, not very Necks-like though

http://www.thenecks.com/image/discography/coverart/buck-solo_live.jpg

The Necks are impossibly great and I would like to thank everybody on this thread for alerting me to their greatness. One of them occasions when the music is truly as amazing as the chimerical homage the group inspires. Thanks people.

nosh on a american hot

is this...is this what you call pizza?

http://www.britishmac.com/worldofwill/pizzaguide/Supermarket%20Fresh/Sainsburys-PizzaExpressAmer.gif

oops
http://www.britishmac.com/worldofwill/pizzaguide/Supermarket%20Fresh/Sainsburys-PizzaExpressAmer.gif

well huh. as american as "peperoni" and jalapeno peppers.

the google image search for "american hot" is kind of awesome all around

five date UK tour: http://www.soundandmusic.org/projects/time-being-harold-buddthe-necks-double-bill

paging, in particular, N Southall

Just got an email from the Big Ears mailing list yesterday -- they're playing Knoxville mid-September. Haven't checked to see what other dates they have. Highly recommended!

Indeed, just arou d the corner from me. Shall be buying tickets as soon as I get paid.

Playing Angel City Jazz Festival here in LA in two weeks. I will be there

I don't think Raab gets enough love - I could listen to the initial piano section all day.

ALso playing London in november, cant wait

The Necks show is tonight and I am going. Two sets with a short intermission. Should be rad!!

nummy num

koala!

So far so good. Three sets to go this weekend.

has anyone heard the new album?

are there other bands that sound like these guys?

Not really, that I know of; bits of The Necks sound a bit like other artists (Aether sounds a bit like Stars of the Lid, as mentioned above), and bits of other artists sound like The Necks (In A Silent Way by Miles Davis, Future Days by CAN, bits of Beak maybe). A couple of bits of the Swans album almost (but other bits REALLY NOT). Some Tortoise. You might get a similar vibe off some Neu. There might be lots of minimal jazz acts out there that I don't know of, I suppose.

I'd suggest just getting as many Necks albums as you can; I've got about eight now, I think.

Bits of Boredoms, maybe.

strange place for snow - est
changing places - tord gustavsen trio
6 - supersilent

I thought baout mentioning est but I feel like they were more 'straight jazz' than Ronan's probably after. Ditto the likes of Polar Bear.

yeah I've been looking for something that sounds like "Drive-by" forever.

Chemist and Hanging Gardens might be your best bets.

yeah i guess miles davis is the only other thing i listen to that is like the necks. i don't mind actual jazz suggestions, but am also curious about people inhabiting the weird space that the necks do.

will check out some of the above recs.

Very pissed i missed the gig at VU the other day, was flattened from FN6. Supersilent are the band i listen to in this vein the most, theyre playing with john paul jones soon which should be awesome. In a more classical direction the arpeggios in the piano work always reminds me of hans otte

yeah really annoyed also... i just couldn't afford it, i should have bought a ticket before being stuck into diploma down-payments.

they prob will be back tho.

Loooooooove these guys, collecting everything, and since I am in the NW USA I will most likely never see them *sob*

>are there other bands that sound like these guys?

Talk Talk's Laughing Stock sounds like a starting point for a lot of Necks stuff. If you took passages from LS and stretched them out for 20 minutes you might end up with "Chemist", or "Drive-by" if you kept stretching

Both great live, don't miss that

I saw these guys at The Village Underground having never knowingly heard a note before in my life and after being astonished by the number of 50s-ish men in the audience wearing soft tweed jackets and nice scarves I buckled in and definitely felt like I was on some sort of drug stronger than the two cans of beer that were in me. On my way out I saw the merch table and was genuinely surprised to see CDs for sale as it genuinely didn't occur to me that there would be a point in recording their music because when you played it back it would be the same each time, frozen, which is kind of the opposite of what they do.

In some ways it feels like "outsider art" - despite some resemblance to other "jammy" or motorik or noise bands it doesn't really plug into any traditions of avant-garde music that I know of (I'm probably wrong about this, though)

The fact that they titled one of their CDs "sex" is hilarious and totally apposite

Though maybe "porn" would be a better title for something that freezes in documentary form a performance that's improvisational as a foundational principle

Sex is an all time great and your barren musings mean fuck all to me pal.

Thinking the band is great in the moment and having the opinion that the recordings might not capture that doesn't seem barren to me. The band is still great and the Sex LP is still great regardless.

It seems pointless to start a thread for Dawn of Midi since the album is eight years old and they're not an active group, but I've been listening to Dysnomia on repeat lately.