Amongst the myriad reasons I moved to Sydney,
the chance to see The Necks live more often was one of them. Not particularly
high up the list, admittedly, but on the list nonetheless. Ironically then, as
soon as I moved here they embarked on a lengthy European tour.
Yet last Friday night I got to see them
play, live at the Sydney Opera House. My review last time, three years ago, was unusually pithy but also honest. This most recent performance was just as good. Playing in
front of two films by Tony Buck, projected onto three screens, the band played
two phenomenal sets. They seem to me to be pursuing a form of music
with real structure, inverting that hoary old epithet of Goethe and playing
defrosted architecture. That’s my own peculiar interpretation of course, and perhaps influenced by the weight of the Opera House around us, but
it’s something about the way they ‘show their workings’ in their
improvisations, building dense blocks from discrete motifs and with such a pronounced sense of dynamics.
Once again, cannot recommend highly enough.
I’ll second that. Myself and SH saw them a couple of weeks back at the Brighton festival and were left dumbfounded and awestruck at Chris Abraham’s total mastery of a
monster pipe organ he’d presumably had only a few hours (if that) to become acquainted with.