Album: The Necks

Mosquito/See Through, RER MEGACORP

For the Australian chilled-jazz improv trio The Necks, time is accorded its due importance in the musical scheme of things. There's no attempt to shoehorn a vast sprawl into three minutes if it requires more space to work its magic. Last year's Drive By was a single piece allowed to ease its way just beyond the hour mark; the two pieces that constitute this double album likewise take a little more than 60 minutes apiece, though in the case of "See Through", listeners may be tricked by the punctuation of the music with passages of silence, some several minutes long, which are integral to the piece. It opens with a restrained rattle of shells and a speculative fog of piano chords which rises imperceptibly for six minutes, before slipping into silence for about a minute, then picking up again where it left off; and so on, alternating sound and silence in varied complements for an hour. It's not music that "goes" somewhere, it's more a case of allowing an atmosphere to crystallise at its own pace.

For the Australian chilled-jazz improv trio The Necks, time is accorded its due importance in the musical scheme of things. There's no attempt to shoehorn a vast sprawl into three minutes if it requires more space to work its magic. Last year's Drive By was a single piece allowed to ease its way just beyond the hour mark; the two pieces that constitute this double album likewise take a little more than 60 minutes apiece, though in the case of "See Through", listeners may be tricked by the punctuation of the music with passages of silence, some several minutes long, which are integral to the piece. It opens with a restrained rattle of shells and a speculative fog of piano chords which rises imperceptibly for six minutes, before slipping into silence for about a minute, then picking up again where it left off; and so on, alternating sound and silence in varied complements for an hour. It's not music that "goes" somewhere, it's more a case of allowing an atmosphere to crystallise at its own pace. "Mosquito" is more similar to Drive By, growing gradually from seeds of bamboo percussion watered with droplets of piano and a steady, single-note bassline. Soothing and meditative, it's music that defies the short-attention-span demands of modern life.