Body

Australia’s greatest cult band, The Necks, has a new piece to offer the world this summer, entitled “Body”. Different again to all previous Necks albums (20 in total), the band has chosen 10 words and phrases that summarize the four richly contrasting episodes of this hour-long, mesmerizing groove. They are as follows: Episodic, Driving, Dynamic, Layered, Celebratory, Soaring, Rocking out, Buoyant, Sustained, Perfectly paced. The album uses, yet again, the combination of Chris Abrahams (piano, keyboards) Tony Buck (drums, percussion, and guitar very much to the fore on this one) and Lloyd Swanton (acoustic bass) with Tim Whitten (engineer), who has recorded and/or mixed the last twelve Necks albums. The Necks hold their own with the best of them when it comes to rhythmic complexity, but they have put much of that to one side for this album in the interests of conjuring their most relentlessly driving album since "Hanging Gardens".

The Necks’ 20th album is as laser-focused on repetition as ever. But for the first time, the trio indulges its rock’n’roll instincts, resulting in one of the most powerful albums in the band’s catalog.

Australian improv crew detours into new terrain after a 30-year career of ambient gorgeousness

For a band that regularly applies musical and sonic layers gradually and then strips them away, the Necks continue to confound genre expectations.