Aeternal Flux II

THE NECKS – THREE   Fish of Milk 2020 Nominative determinism being the order of the day for Australian minimalist jazz cult trio The Necks, their 21 st album contains three pieces (2 + 1, geddit?), all around 20-minutes. The groove-based improv and pulse-less spatio-textural exploration of the first two, ‘Bloom’ and ‘Lovelock’, thematically span the group’s pivotal releases, Hanging Gardens (1999) and Open (2013). The final track, ‘Further’, even offers the sort of uplifting theme that periodically enters Hanging Gardens like a mirage plotted on tumultuous, asymptotic cyberfunk. That album served as the avant-jazz world’s pre-millenial summation of its adaptability to drum 'n' bass and hip-hop. Three conveys a similarly multi-faceted evocation of musical history whilst encompassing more than enough facets of this group’s continual evolution. ‘Bloom/Lovelock’ are homeostatic snapshots of immersive processes. The time dilation effect of their longer works is st...

A thick fug of expectation envelops an audience packed into the gig room of Hobart’s Brisbane Hotel on a rainy Sunday night. It’s the final Australian gig by Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus band. It's likely to be the last Tasmanian performance by an overseas or mainland act for some time given the island state’s move towards Covid-19 lockdown. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 was the last time such policy was necessary. The setlist encapsulates the no wave pioneer’s career in various groups (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, 8 Eyed Spy, her revered collaborations with Rowland S. Howard) as well as tributes to admired precursors. Pere Ubu’s proto-punk anthem ‘Final Solution’ and the glam psych of Alice Cooper’s ‘Black Juju’ sound vital and celebratory in retroviral reimagining. The only thing missing from this set is their sledgehammer version of Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’. ‘Still Burning’ is dedicated to local hero Howard whose stylistic repurposing of the guitar as sound generat...