There wasn’t going to be any typical Necks hypnotic groove of such on this first of two evenings at the Bishopsgate Institute. Instead, the Australian trio went for much more intricate and fluid formations.

It all started with Chris Abrahams weaving a delicate melody upon which Tony Buck added shimmering bells and steel drum, with only sprinkles of bass from Lloyd Swanton, and for a while, this constituted the core of the performance, but the tone got darker with bowed double bass, and what was initially an airy solo motif on the piano turned into a more monolithic sequence as Abrahams switched to a hypnotic theme, with contrasting clusters of notes in the higher and lower registers, his finger repeatedly rippling on the same parts of the keyboard. Meanwhile, Buck was layering a pretty complex sonic mesh from his vast panoply of percussions. Continue Reading »