artist: The Necks country of origin: Australia style(s): Jazz, ambient, world beat essential releases: Sex (1989, Fish Of Milk/Private Music) Next (1990, Fish Of Milk) Aquatic (1994, Fish Of Milk/Carpet Bomb) Hanging Gardens (1999, Fish Of Milk)

When a group calls itself The Necks, releases an album called Sex, and fills it with a single hour-long piece of music, you know you must be in for something interesting. On their debut album this incomparable Australian "jazz" trio of Chris Abrahams (piano and keyboards), Tony Buck (percussion) and Lloyd Swanton (bass guitar) have fashioned a strange, bold, ultimately enchanting masterpiece. Sex combines simple, repetitive percussion and bass signatures with jazz-style piano improvisation in an ambient context. “Just imagine”, wrote Rolling Stone magazine, “an early, spacey, guitarless Pink Floyd after prolonged exposure to Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.” 

Next literally continues where its predecessor left off, opening with ten seconds of, erm, Sex before launching into six new tracks. Additional instruments this time around include guitar, trumpet and saxophone. “Pele” and “The World At War” retain the ambient grace and spare, hypnotic pulse of the previous album. The more upbeat “Jazz Cancer” and “Nice Policeman, Nasty Policeman” both have a certain rude vigour, while the amusing title track owes obvious inspiration to the Byrne/Eno album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1981) with sampled voice fragments woven into a funk groove with Third World polyrhythms.

On the first two albums the trio's subtly eclectic sound and spare, minimal style is firmly established but a number of their subsequent releases have been no less compelling. Aquatic and Hanging Gardens are blessed with an alluring cosmic undercurrent, with guest Stevie Wishart’s droning barrel organ on Aquatic being particularly effective. Spacemusic? Or space jazz, perhaps? Forget the labels, suffice to say they're both exquisite listening and masterful exercises in quiet, controlled power.

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