First Impressions 005: In a non-sentimental mood - The Necks + heart-swelling American Primitive, loved-up ambient, time-lapsed hip-hop and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello!

The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck announced themselves at the Sydney Opera House last Friday upon arriving to prepare for two nights of shows. ‘Oh, right! The jazz band!’, the security guard replied. Recounted by Lloyd with some irony, the comment struck me as I watched The Necks’ second set on Saturday night, as the trio seemed to recast decades of jazz approaches in their own vision, seamlessly across their 45 minute improvisation. It started with as a kind of hopped-up post-bop, moving into both astral and avant feels in the way the nuance and force of this band transform their state of grace into a lofted zone of pure ecstasy. I’d never heard their connection to jazz so clearly articulated before, knowing the essence of the group over 30 years has been distinct for being highly indistinct from anything else in music. I mentioned this to Lloyd the next day in the context of the guard’s reductive comment, and he replied with a reminder of one of the foundational premises of the band, at a time when the possibility of jazz can feel stifled: 

“I think it's [jazz] an ongoing and undeniable energy within the band,” he says. “I'm fond of saying that while what we play is not jazz (and never was), it was essential for us to pass through jazz as individuals for us to emerge where we are now. That is not to say we think jazz is now longer valid or relevant, but there's no denying certain elements of what we do were a response to what we perceived as a lack in a lot of jazz.”

Whatever the case, every time The Necks come to town, it’s always an opportunity. An opportunity for possibility in the moment, not tied to music’s past or future. Just now.
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OK, let’s go:

A time to love, a time to die - Amor Muere: Another belated discovery on my part. Here’s a group of Mexico City musicians coming together pooling their idiosyncratic talents into a strangely beautiful, invigorating work. Mabe Fratti’s cello and Gibrana Cervantes’' violin cause the thrust of much action here, scraping, squalling and plucking together throughout, reminding me of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s disquieting guitar duelling in early Sonic Youth. Singer / sound artist Camille Mandoki and Concepción Huerta (electronics, tapes) heighten the atmosphere with apocalyptic-type drones, audio grit and other throbbing discharges of rhythm and sound, often pulling back with coolly seductive passages that still echo the preceding howl. Dreamy vocals pull things skyward, and you feel their approach was to write songs with the collective approach experimentalism can offer - hierarchy be damned.

Shackamaxon Concert - Elkhorn & Mike Gangloff: Within their acoustic / electric guitar set-up, Elkhorn crack American Primitive Guitar open and all the currents that run through its evolving, decades-long revival - jazz, blues, ragtime, psych, noise and eastern influence - into new realms by distilling their common resonances into zones of pure feeling. Their consistent collaborations, such as this one with fiddle player Mike Gangloff, offer a chance to tease new shapes from their sound by way of texture and interplay. These two long pieces radiate with a gorgeousness that’s hard to shake, bright with unfurling melodies from all three players coalescing with the vibe they could glide on forever. Sensitive and searching, this is heart-swelling stuff.

Sunlight Filtering Through Leaves – Mai Sugimoto: Wonderfully elastic jazz, led by Chicago alto saxophonist Sugimoto, who has a style both bustling and tuneful in this trio setting. The tumbling, joyous melodicism of Ornette Coleman seems a strong influence alongside a rhythm section of Joshua Abrams (bass) and Isaiah Spencer (drums) that’s ever trickling with invention and sensitivity. When Sugimoto swaps sax for flute, air and space are key for a more pastoral hue to her music. With so many surprising turns throughout, the trio’s undoubted chemistry holds sway no matter where their impulses take them.  

Pièces – Danielle Boutet: Think of the Freedom To Spend label as manning the music section of heaven’s very own thrift store. This self-released 1985 cassette from Danielle Boutet was largely distributed to friends in Quebec, and yet somehow a copy wound up with the FTS crew who have seen fit to let the world know about it with this reissue. This is peculiar but magnetic – a singular casting of French chanson and goth/chamber folk set within both electronic avant-garde and DIY camps. That’s to say, for all the drama in these pieces, there is a homely vibe making this an understated fever dream that comes with its own blanket.

Endless Love – Romance: Released on Valentine’s Day, the new one from the mysterious Romance takes its cues from the forever hyper-love bubbles concocted by the twinkling, sugary melodrama of 80s and 90s era pop and soul. Sound sources from that orbit are stretched to resemble the backing for a choir of angels, then cut with an understated ominous edge meant to reflect the inevitable tumult of love. This one long suite is like a mini-series in ambient, hitting many emotional touchpoints with cliffhanging tension.

Alchemy - Jay Cinema: Lo-fi, gauzy soul-tipped hip hop often slowed to the point where it makes DJ Screw sound chirpy. There’s no time lapse on Jay Cinema’s wordplay though, all yappy and urgent in punching through his existential crisis, by far the clearest thing on here. 

The Unearthing - Paige Alice Naylor: This Chicago-based artist composed and recorded her new work to represent ‘the intermediate state of living and dying’, using voice, electronics, synth, turntables and field recordings. These heady tracks layer and loop for that repeating kind of feeling, giving way to glitched movements of the same sound sources to lock you right into the temporal wheel. Naylor’s poetic verse similarly pans into text collage with a an effect both alien and dreamy above the set’s overall blurry sequence.       

Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.