The Necks: Unknown Measures
A Q & A with The Necks' bassist, Lloyd Swanton.
I would have first met Lloyd Swanton, bassist for The Necks, either doing interviews for the street press or volunteering at community radio station 2SER-FM in Sydney.
After a time I just started seeing him around. I’d begin going to local jazz gigs, mostly organised by the Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA) and almost exclusively at a café opened at night by arrangement, minutes away from the Annandale Hotel, where I’d gone to countless indie-rock shows. I usually went on my own, which was odd for me, but felt compelled after falling hard for saxophonist Bernie McGann’s Ugly Beauty album, a trio work featuring Lloyd on bass and drummer John Pochee. The story went that Bernie was a postie by day, and after work he’d head into the bushland of the Royal National Park on the edge of the NSW South Coast to practice. In summer, The Royal National Park captures both a breezy air and that deep, ineffable feeling of being in nature. Bernie brought both to his playing, and it was unique. I wanted to see more jazz that felt close to home. Lloyd would always stop and chat with an affable enthusiasm, always remarking he was glad you’d come.
SIMA once toured the celebrated pianist Andrew Hill, who I’d discovered down a Blue Note rabbithole with his Point of Departure record. Hill’s band would be a pickup band featuring musicians from Sydney, including Lloyd. As a student, I wasn’t sure if I could spring for the ticket, so it was fortuitous bumping into Lloyd, where I asked how the shows were going. His response was a line I’ve never forgotten: “We haven’t got the pin number to his jazz account yet”. I regret not going.
I hosted an Australian independent music show at 2SER-FM in Sydney, where I eventually became Music Director. Through the people I met at 2SER, I was able to pull together threads of music activity in Sydney that were independent, not merely indie. That became an important distinction to me, as I discovered the tape-based experimentation of The Loop Orchestra, the electronic music collective Clan Analogue, Clarion Fracture Zone’s impressionistic jazz, alongside the guitar-rock and jangle-pop bands that formed my post-university friend circles. All of this was in our backyard, mostly within the radius of Sydney’s inner-west where I was living.
And then there was The Necks. Their 1989 debut, Sex, initially seemed to gain more notoriety than listeners. In one sharehouse I was in, a couple of us were hooked on this near hour-long piece that still stands as a perfect encapsulation of the band in purest form: piano, bass and drums in elegant, circular motion, barely unfolding. Anchored by two bass notes from Lloyd and the subtlest of swing in Tony Buck’s drums, Chris Abrahams’ piano refrains wove patiently through the swirl, with percussion and other sound sources rendered liquid in the mix. An ambient stillness, the slow-blooming logic of minimalism, and jazz’s instinct for uncanny shifts. If Sex had been released in more recent times, you may have mistaken it for a devilishly simple loop made on Ableton. We played it to whoever dropped by and demanded silence. Some thought it was a prank. One friend broke the rules after 20 minutes to ask: ‘when does it kick in?’.
Going to Necks shows early on seemed almost clandestine, always holding the thrill of the new. No two shows were the same - only the band’s commitment to slow, patient improvisation was replicated. Their building reputation meant you needed to get to the venue early to find a spot to sit. I found myself up the front of one show with a great seat. In the middle of the first set, the actress Toni Collette appeared, and with her arrival, a venue staff member motioning for me to move. I gave him my best ‘I can see dead people’ look. Toni ended up on a milk crate. Position matters at a Necks show. Good sightlines are crucial for taking in their feats of endurance. One time at the Sydney Opera House, I leaned over to whisper to Peter ‘Blackie’ Black of the Hard-Ons on behalf of a friend. (the Hard-Ons and The Necks could lay claim to the most unique pairing ever in the history of split seven-inch singles). It was standing room only, and my friend was caught facing most of a pylon. Would Blackie move half a foot? The response was delivered dry and slow: “No”.
When I started writing for the Sydney street press, it was an opportunity to further the music I brought to my 2SER program, covering what was both a beautifully weird and broadly congenial scene where an indie- pop band would happily play alongside an act inspired by thrash metal as much as Dario Argento soundtracks. I was energised enough to release a compilation of some of these bands to display how easily the spread of all this music co-existed, with a mandatory, if mawkish, indie-centered ‘90s title sitting in between the irony and sarcasm set into a scene where some acts were crossing over into the mainstream. I interviewed The Necks many times in the mid-90s - the venues they played at had bought advertising, so an article needed to get done, I was the only writer who had seen them, so I was the go-to guy to an embarassing degree. Each time, the responses to my questions were measured and thoughtful, yet they never quite reached the core of the band’s essence.
Asked to produce a best-of Australian music for 1994, I thought nothing of placing a vast cross-section of Australian music into my list. This wasn’t simply a reflection of my mindset, but the reality on the ground I thought was part of the brief. I was told by the editor that it wasn’t ‘indie enough’ and not what they expected. “It’s all Australian music,” I said as if to stubbornly emphasise a point, “and those are my picks”. Along with the debut album from The Dirty Three - a trio closely aligned with The Necks in carving out a new vision from traditional foundations - the list included The Necks’ Aquatic. It also featured The catholics, another of Lloyd’s long-running projects exploring fluid intersections of jazz and global music. With the possible exception of what may be the greatest jazz album to come out of Australia, it wasn’t a list of well-kept secrets. What was happening was happening to a lot of people.
The eclectic energy coursing through Sydney music curled in on itself once grunge shifted from catchphrase to commodity and sides were drawn. After interviewing Lee Ranaldo for an upcoming Sonic Youth tour in 1998, Lee asked for suggestions on a support act. The request was for something leftfield and engrossing, though removed from any Sonic Youth-style signatures. There was only one choice for me - The Necks. Lee was intrigued and passed this along to the promoter, who duly phoned to tell me off. They wanted to sell tickets, I was informed. The Necks went on much later to support slots for both Swans and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I must admit it felt like vindication. On a side note, Thurston Moore insisted that one of those Sydney shows have one of Oren Ambarchi’s outfits as the support. Noisy and often deliberately nonsensical, I happened to be standing next to said promoter during their set. He did not look thrilled, especially when Thurston declared them to be ‘the best band in Australia’ before Sonic Youth began. On a side side note, in his early days playing live, Ambarchi played drums for a time in a free jazz outfit called EAR-Rational Music. I created an audio documentary for my university studies on improvisation, focussing on the band and their approach. One of the recordings I used was called ‘Neck Talk’, in homage to The Necks.
Apart from DIY and experimental shows in warehouses and the like, typical venue circuits have congealed, where anything more broadly creative equates to risk. It’s hard to fault - from a business perspective, live music in Australia is in a highly precarious position, turning venues from cultural safe houses to safety‑first spaces. Though after many decades together, The Necks play much larger and prestigious stages in Sydney these days - Sydney Opera House, City Recital Hall - where government-funded mandates allow for risk. These spaces offer the chance for unique live music experiences, but they sit at a level where nurturing local music is not in the remit. Digital capitalism took the value out of live music and in turn failed the live music economy. Yet The Necks have maintained an upward trajectory in attracting wider audiences while hewing to the more horizontal culture they began in, where possibility of music was not merely related to how it could scale. When Lloyd says below, “We’re trying to access something far deeper than mere human emotion”, I shake off the temptation to take this further, resisting an easy narrative or hero quote. The Necks have conjured magic from possibility, and maybe that’s all we need to know.
While Lloyd asserts that since they decided to begin playing live “at every gig, everyone in the room’s on pretty much the same wavelength,” I’ve borne witness to at least one outlier. In 2001, The Necks were sequestered within a small indoor space to play at The Big Day Out, Australia’s biggest music festival (if not the world) at the time, co-produced by Ken West, one person who was ever-willing to step outside of programming expectations when it came to the Sydney leg. The space that had also become a sanctuary away from the repressive heat of the day, with sweaty punters using it as a meeting space after getting lost in the moshpit, coordinating by phone while exclaiming how sick Limp Bizkit had been. (You can hear the rumble of the crowd outside at the beginning of this recording) I hope there were a few converts that day.
Still, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. This isn’t hubris, but testament to the singularity of The Necks. The collective air at a Necks gig is always apparent. Is that because every attendee - including the band - is never wholly sure what they’ve just seen and heard, but would submit to it over and over again? I sent these questions to Lloyd soon after the release of their triple-CD set, Disquiet, and just as The Necks were heading to Europe for a run of shows. We’d planned to chat online, though jet lag and tour wrangling put paid to that idea. Lloyd’s responses came towards the end of November after returning to his home in the Blue Mountains, around two hours west of Sydney. They were a reminder to me of those earlier interviews, where I came to understand he would never want to go so deeply into the unknowns about the music of The Necks. That, perhaps, is one thing definitively wired into their being - theirs is a well that remains endless and overflowing from creating space where the unknown is everything. And that is in itself the power of the group’s music, to which any attempt at scrutiny might just be a foolhardy pursuit. Yet, here I am again, spurred by the magnificence of Disquiet, looking to pick Lloyd’s brain about many things I think of about The Necks, and have done for a very long time. And here he is, graciously looking to enter his unknowns, but only as far as he is willing, without breaking their spell. Thank you, Lloyd.
In my introduction to this interview, I’m painting a picture of an eclectic music scene in Sydney where there weren’t any great dividers – I’m thinking of Spiral Scratch (the label where The Necks released their first two albums) releasing Trout Fishing in Quebec, Chris (Abrahams, Necks pianist) playing with the Sparklers, among many other things. How did that feel to you at the time and was that fertile ground for the Necks to begin or was it completely independent of anything else?
I think there’d been an eclecticist brewing in me for some years by then, so I’d have to say it suited me down to the ground! Having fallen hard for jazz in my late teens and - perhaps as a consequence of falling so hard - become a bit one-eyed about the artform, I eventually left that dogmatic stance behind and found myself most excited by hybridization. So, the eclecticism of the Sydney scene at that time was, to me, the natural way of things. An early example for me of the Sydney eclecticism you’re referring to was The Benders, the hard edged- jazz group I was in before The Necks, being released on Hot Records, whose catalogue was mostly populated with alternative and post-punk. After a period of time in London in ‘85 - ’86 studying classical bass with a singular purpose, I discovered Christopher Small’s seminal book Music Society Education just before I returned to Sydney, which really opened my mind up to the diversity of world music, and also set in my mind the notion of making music for the sole purpose of being in the music. It was that latter notion which set me thinking along the lines of The Necks, and I picked up the phone and told Chris Abrahams what I’d been thinking. Then we called Tony Buck . .
Bar a couple of exceptions, album titles for The Necks are a single word. To narrow it down to one word, I assume to have something so stark as a title it really must need to be absolutely definitive for the album.
We just don’t have sufficient wit to come up with entire sentences! But seriously, I wouldn’t say it has to be definitive, but a Necks album name has to have a certain inevitability about it for all three of us. Some albums, we’ve really struggled for a long while to come up with a title, but we always know when we hit on the right one, and then you can’t imagine it being called anything else. I can’t think of any of our album titles where we’ve felt in retrospect that we could have come up with something better.
Are there ever any external forces at play when it comes to the three of you making music together? Is calling this latest work Disquiet in any way a nod to the current state of the world?
No, not really, or if there are, only in the most subliminal fashion. When we’re in the studio making an album, the discussion is almost entirely grounded in musical terrain.
How about mood, self-reflection . . that sort of thing?
Again, no, not really. We’re trying to access something far deeper than mere human emotion!
How do things change in the compositional sense when in the studio as opposed to the live improvisations?
The very first time we went into a studio to record, we agreed from the outset that it would be impossible to replicate what happens when we perform live, so we decided to not waste time even attempting to do that. Instead, we tried to accentuate the positives of being in the studio, namely having access to a hugely expanded array of sound possibilities, and secondly, having the freedom to play God and go back and forth in our pieces and choose bits we wanted to tweak, either just to iron out some blemishes, or to provide a direction that was not possible as we were laying the track down. A huge aspect of our ‘composition’ in the studio is in the mixing phase, where we’re not merely mixing, we’re moving parts around temporally, and we’re giving the thumbs up or thumbs down on a heck of a lot of tracks. We’re actually quite ruthless with the mute button in this phase, and a lot of ideas don’t make it through to the final version.
Is there ever any self-referencing – some path you want to continue to explore? Chris’ organ sounds on Rapid Eye Movement (from Disquiet) recalled Aquatic for me.
Yes I think there is, but rarely overtly. Very occasionally in the studio, when we’re casting round for ideas to carry a piece forward, one of us will tell another ‘hey, why don’t you try that thing you did on the such-and-such album?’ (usually an album from long ago). On Rapid Eye Movement from the new album, I suggested to the guys we adopt the same approach we used all the way back on White, from our fourth album, Silent Night. In the studio, to achieve a sense of development commensurate with what we do live on stage, we very much rely on overdubbing and editing. So because we may be moving parts around temporally when we get to the mixing stage, it’s usually cleanest if the bed track - the three of us playing together - stays fairly constant from start to finish. So, usually when we’re all in our individual booths laying down the original bed track, we don’t evolve it like we would in a concert situation. However, there are exceptions, namely White and Rapid Eye Movement, where we allowed the trio bed track to go a little more where it wanted to, and then added perhaps fewer overdubs than we ordinarily would, because the track already had enough movement.
Are there records you’ve made you collectively see as highpoints or watermarks for where you want to get to with the music, or would that be more of a hinderance in moving forward?
I have my personal favourites (Aether, Open for example) but we’d never elevate one of our albums as being some sort of crowning achievement. We’re just trying to make a good record at the time we’re making it. Our ambition for our albums is never loftier than that, and I think over the long term, sticking to that modest goal has delivered some really notable albums. If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt in The Necks (and in music in general) it’s that you must never rest on your laurels. Maybe give yourself a little pat on the back when required, tell yourself that, ‘see - maybe you can play a musical instrument OK!’, and then plough on!
Disquiet has enough material on it for at least two, maybe three Necks albums. What were the considerations in having the four pieces sit together?
Those four pieces came out of a particularly fruitful time in the studio. We suddenly found ourselves with a lot of music in the can. The discussion then was about how to release the pieces – three single discs drip fed out to the public over several years; a double CD and a single disc; or all four pieces, on a triple album. We just argued the merits in a fairly business-like manner of what would best click with our audience. The latter was the one I was gunning for, and in the end the other lads agreed.
The different points of view were held fairly firmly, but I think in the end it was apparent I had the strongest hunch for my preference – which was that what would most appeal to our fans at this point was a triple album – and it was decided we might as well run with it and find out! It’s not as if we’re never going to do another record!
We felt that there was a good diversity among the four pieces; that each of them reflected notably well on all the other pieces, and that we should emphasise that characteristic by releasing them all at once. I think with time, it will really stand out in the Necks catalogue.
What is it like to be ‘in the moment’ at such duration for you as a musician playing in The Necks? I remember seeing a show at the Harbourside Brasserie and when the set was finished, you all practically high fived each other, which seemed rare.
It can be experienced on several levels. Sometimes I’m thinking pure nuts-and-bolts musical possibilities – “OK, if I’m doing this... and Tony is doing that… and Chris is doing that… maybe I might try doing……. THIS! Oh shit, that’s not what I thought it would sound like! Hang on, that’s actually BETTER than what I was hearing in my head!” Other times I am completely swept up in the music – as close to the experience of the listener as is possible. I’m only barely aware of the instrument in my hands. And other times, shockingly, I’m quite distracted; thinking how tired I am, thinking of what I’ll be doing the next day. But the thing is, I’ve heard enough recordings of our pieces, and remembered the state of mind I was in at various sections, to conclude that none of these three states is better or worse for making music. On first glance, one might assume the swept-away state is the most profound, followed by the nuts-and-bolts musical consideration state, and then the thoroughly-distracted state being a distant third. Not so. All three can deliver amazing music.
Tell me more about playing in the distracted state.
Well, I think it’s that in a distracted state, instinct takes over, and one is not over-thinking one’s musical choices - rather, letting the years of listening to, practising, and thinking about music guide one’s moves. If there were written parts to play, this distracted state would not be helpful, but when you’re just trying to guide the music along to where it ‘wants’ to go, it can be very fruitful.
Conversely, how does finding the moment work in the studio – I assume it doesn’t just come over you as it might do live when making a recording.
We’re not so much seeking that when we’re in the studio. It’s an entirely different frame of reference when in the studio. Having said that, I think Chris and Tony have laid down some truly inspired overdubs on some of our pieces over the years, and were well and truly ‘in the moment’ when they were delivering them.
If there’s any sort of trend in The Necks’ music in recent years, it may be a lean towards getting slower. (this is no slight, considering albums like Bleed) Of course this is bucked on Disquiet with Ghost Net, though I wondered if that had been a conscious thing in allowing you to continue to find and explore new spaces within what The Necks have done for so long.
It’s not something we’ve expressed to each other overtly. It’s just where the process - and life - are taking us. Also, as you age, you have to get better at using your supply of energy more efficiently, so maybe there’s an element of that.
Notions of time and change are implicit in The Necks – no proper listening to the band could avoid this. Where do you think change has come, if at all, for the three of you as both listeners and players in your understanding of this over the 30-plus decades you have been together and how it’s affected the music over that time?
I’m fond of finding parallels between our one-hour pieces, and our four-decade career arc. Wheels within wheels. At the start of a Necks piece, nobody – audience or band - can anticipate where it will get to. The same goes for our career. When we started workshopping the concept in a rehearsal room at the University of Sydney in 1986, there was absolutely nothing to suggest that a few decades later, as we boarded a plane in Sydney, we’d be getting emails from our European agent saying ‘Oh, by the way, all your London shows are sold out’. I mean, our clear, stated intention at the start was to never perform in public. Just the notion of this band playing outside the rehearsal room was foreign, let alone on the other side of the world, let alone to an audience waiting there to hear us! And the wider world has changed so much. When The Necks started, everyone had landlines, with answering machines. Some of us had big long extension cables for our phones so we could walk around the house talking on the phone and not be bound to the phone table in the hallway. A woman commentating on a broadcast of men’s sport was unthinkable. We put coins in parking meters and when your time had run out, a little metal flag popped up in the glass case saying EXPIRED. Every car had a street directory in the glove box. I’m not being a tiresome old bore, I’m trying to make the point that in a world where the day-to-day was that fundamentally different, there’s no way that our view and perception of that world couldn’t also have been very different to today’s. And as I age (disgracefully, I hope) I am coming more and more to understand just how differently we change our perceptions of time passing - with time passing. I remember my partner and me being very amused the first time our kids starting reminiscing – weren’t they a bit young to be already reminiscing? Lol! And I thought to myself, will they have that same experience one day, and if so, how will it have differed to my version? The same perception of time passing (or lack of it) applies in our pieces. One’s perception of what happens at minute 35 is coloured not only by what happens immediately before and after it, but also by our perception at minute 35 of what happened at the very start of the piece. And also by our perception, once we’re at the very end of the piece, of what happened at minute 35. So it’s hard to put my finger on any particular point where change has come in our pieces or in our career, or where it has come from, other than to observe that change is occurring all the time, on several levels, and our perception of each of these levels affects our perceptions of all the other levels. Phew.
-
Lloyd Swanton’s three key recordings:
Steve Reich — Music for Eighteen Musicians
Soon after leaving school, I was taking weekly double bass lessons from the wonderful Dave Ellis. Every week he would load me up with half a dozen LPs to take home and get acquainted with. I owe a great deal to Dave not only for his bass instruction, but for opening my ears to so much wonderful and diverse music. One week, one of the LPs was the recently released Music for Eighteen Musicians. I had never experienced immersion in music before. It changed my world and sowed the seeds in my mind of what would lead to The Necks half a decade later. I still listen to it and I still love its shimmering depths.
John Coltrane — My Favourite Things
Specifically, Steve Davis’s dogged bass playing. I’ve told this story often, but in my early twenties, I was in a very crowded party in Paddington, Sydney, so crowded I was trapped up against one of the hi-fi speakers, when someone put this track on. The speaker I was next to was conveying the bass channel, and I was transfixed by how Davis’ almost unchanging part almost provoked the incredible sonic excursions of Coltrane, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones around him. I suspect Coltrane told him “just play dom, dom, di-dom dom”, and contrary to Coltrane’s expectations, he did! For the full 14 minutes, he rarely diverges.
Miles Davis — Shhh / Peaceful
Again, Dave Holland’s bass part. Particularly ironic, this one, given Holland’s renowned virtuosity on the bass, but for the duration of the track, he more or less just sits on the same two notes, and magic happens all around. I took the learnings from this and Steve Davis’s bass part with me into The Necks.
Disquiet is out now. You may be better placed making any purchase from thenecks.com
Thanks for reading.
-
Andrew Khedoori was the curator of Longform Editions, 2018 - 2025.
Please follow this new project - Residence via this Substack and at our Bandcamp.
Residence logo by Mark Gowing.