It’s possible that there is not a band that is more Café Oto than the Necks. The Australian three piece have been around since 1987, initially happily improvising together in Sydney. Keyboard player Chris Abrahams and bassist Lloyd Swanton still live within 100km of their original base but drummer Tony Buck has lived in Berlin for over 20 years. Pre-pandemic, they’d get together in Australia to create, record and subsequently tour. Adjustments have been made but they’ve found a way of working.
Their music tends to exist in long form. It isn’t unusual for their albums to be single tracks running over an hour. It often develops slowly and incrementally, but their attitude is flexible. In an interview in the Wire in March 2023, the comparisons were drawn to ambient music.
We never demand that anyone listens to our pieces for the whole time they’re playing
Lloyd Swanton
45 minutes to an hour seemed to the right about of time to hone in on one particular piece, play it and play it… and get out before it gets boring
Tony Buck
This was the final night of a four night residency. They’re the sort of band that develop a dedicated fanbase, niche in size but fanatical in intent. This was my first time seeing them and I was intrigued as to what the night may hold. I’d really enjoyed last year’s Travel, which was made up of four tracks around the twenty minute mark. Despite the band’s protestations that you should dip in and out of their music, walking away from something still seems something of an anathema to me. The (relative) shortness of the pieces on Travel worked as a half way house between immersion and getting on with the other things in your life.
The buzz was palpable in Hackney, much of it created by bald bearded men (my tribes are clearly aging with me). Talking to a few of my neighbours on the evening, many had attended the earlier nights of the residency and had been impressed, hence the air of expectancy. The guys next to me suggested that they’d been “really cooking”.
We got two sets from the band. The first started with a single double bass note being plucked then bowed by Lloyd Swanton. Tony Buck started beating out a gentle rhythm on the toms and Chris Abrahams started a gentle Arabic melody. Slowly a storm brewed. Washes were created by the ride cymbal whilst the piano moved to more malevolent block chords. The intensity built as the rhythm section became more frantic. And then it dissipated to silence.
What was telling was the lack of obvious visual communication between the players. Pianist Abrahams was based on the right of the stage with his back to his bandmates. Bass player Swanton was in the middle and barely opened his eyes during the performance. Buck appeared to be the most engaged with his bandmates but there was barely anything there. No flicks or nods as to when to change the tempo or pace up or down – nothing. It just emphasised how transient the music was. It only exists in the space it was created for that time and is gone.
The second set was like a ball rolling down a bumpy hill of varying gradients. It was propelled by a combination of gravity and a couple of rattling and shaking things from Buck. It sped up and it occasionally slowed down. It veered off in an interesting direction but ultimately rolled with more speed and intensity until ending with a beautiful piano melody, echoed by the bass.
In chatting online after the gig, a respected musician mate commented that he and his compadre had a miserable experience at a Necks gig where they never got going. I could conceive how this would be the case. The intimacy of Cafe Oto puts you in the heart of the creation process. There seems to be a collective will from the audience to move the band along. A different place and crowd and it might not work.
I guess that’s the rough with the smooth of the Necks’ approach. If you want a band playing identikit versions of the tunes you’ve heard on their last few albums, they aren’t the band for you. The uncharted territory of each performance provides the element of chance.
I’m glad I gambled.
BlackCountryRock 