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Bleed
Bleed in Bloomington, MN
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Size: CD
Bleed
is the 23rd studio album from Australian piano trio
the Necks
. It follows 2023's
Travel
and is their second offering on the venerable
Northern Spy
label. The trio of pianist
Chris Abrahams
, bassist
Lloyd Swanton
, and drummer
Tony Buck
improvised and recorded
as a single, 42-minute composition on the theme of stillness: its language, meaning, presence, and disruptions.
Abrahams
introduces the work with sustained, single piano notes in the middle and lower register for several minutes.
Buck
supports them after five minutes with sheeny cymbal washes, reverbed treated bass and kickdrum notes, bells, and chime sounds. They merge seemingly randomly, though
is offering an atonal base, complete with lower-register drones. At six minutes, he plays his first piano chord, but it is isolated behind
's rolling snare that fades as electronics meld with the piano. While the piano offers sparse, detached repetition, bass and drums follow no other logic than trying to answer the question, "what is stillness?" The music investigates this and other queries on the theme. During their restraint over the first 15 minutes, the listener can hear tonal and textural tensions offering utterance to the entity being created. After the intro, the trio investigate the very sounds they just birthed with equanimity and consensus. Abstraction, dissonance, ambience, and limpid harmonics meet at the 13-minute mark and pursue a different musical direction as electronics, droning bass, and sparse percussion become painterly, shifting details and responses as the music changes in shape, form, and dynamic. Five minutes later,
Swanton
's guitar slips in unobtrusively, adding an assonant harmonic frame atop rolling tom-toms and kickdrums as
plays a circular pattern on synth. The unhurried abstraction aurally begs for release at about the halfway mark, yet
strip it down further, offering a small series of changes amid imposing silence and dynamic restraint.
elides a pattern in the upper register as
answers with single droning notes;
caresses various percussion instruments or lays out altogether. The bassist offers an arco drone interspersed with single notes. The piano is played, sampled, and treated from the bottom end. It all becomes a foundation for harmonic interjections with rumbling cymbals. That sense of menace eventually gives way to organ, chimes, and abstract tensions. They gradually present an exoskeleton of a melody with lithe electronics, circular dynamics, and a breezy tonal palette that ushers in silence. Ultimately,
is
' most formless, abstract, and focused album, one that that points toward a brave new direction. ~ Thom Jurek
is the 23rd studio album from Australian piano trio
the Necks
. It follows 2023's
Travel
and is their second offering on the venerable
Northern Spy
label. The trio of pianist
Chris Abrahams
, bassist
Lloyd Swanton
, and drummer
Tony Buck
improvised and recorded
as a single, 42-minute composition on the theme of stillness: its language, meaning, presence, and disruptions.
Abrahams
introduces the work with sustained, single piano notes in the middle and lower register for several minutes.
Buck
supports them after five minutes with sheeny cymbal washes, reverbed treated bass and kickdrum notes, bells, and chime sounds. They merge seemingly randomly, though
is offering an atonal base, complete with lower-register drones. At six minutes, he plays his first piano chord, but it is isolated behind
's rolling snare that fades as electronics meld with the piano. While the piano offers sparse, detached repetition, bass and drums follow no other logic than trying to answer the question, "what is stillness?" The music investigates this and other queries on the theme. During their restraint over the first 15 minutes, the listener can hear tonal and textural tensions offering utterance to the entity being created. After the intro, the trio investigate the very sounds they just birthed with equanimity and consensus. Abstraction, dissonance, ambience, and limpid harmonics meet at the 13-minute mark and pursue a different musical direction as electronics, droning bass, and sparse percussion become painterly, shifting details and responses as the music changes in shape, form, and dynamic. Five minutes later,
Swanton
's guitar slips in unobtrusively, adding an assonant harmonic frame atop rolling tom-toms and kickdrums as
plays a circular pattern on synth. The unhurried abstraction aurally begs for release at about the halfway mark, yet
strip it down further, offering a small series of changes amid imposing silence and dynamic restraint.
elides a pattern in the upper register as
answers with single droning notes;
caresses various percussion instruments or lays out altogether. The bassist offers an arco drone interspersed with single notes. The piano is played, sampled, and treated from the bottom end. It all becomes a foundation for harmonic interjections with rumbling cymbals. That sense of menace eventually gives way to organ, chimes, and abstract tensions. They gradually present an exoskeleton of a melody with lithe electronics, circular dynamics, and a breezy tonal palette that ushers in silence. Ultimately,
is
' most formless, abstract, and focused album, one that that points toward a brave new direction. ~ Thom Jurek
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