six years after the 7" on Drone Rec. here's the first LP for this german experimental / electro-acoustic drone project (by MIRKO UHLIG), wo loves to work with obscure / surprising / dadaistic found sounds & delicate drones, creating disturbing & dark'n'beautiful atmospheres at almost the same time; quite unique stuff, a droney mind- & earplay.... comes with bonus CD & appropriate artwork from ROBERT SCHALINSKI (COLUMN ONE)

project of TOBIAS FISCHER (FEU FOLLET) and MIRKO UHLIG (AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF), a great retro-trip into soundrealms of the "Berliner Schule" of the 70's.. - "References are plentiful, ranging from the great pioneers Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as well as Kluster and Eno to the magical musical territories of Coil, Robert Fripp and Mirror.. " - golden vinyl, great special designed die-cut sleeves, numbered ed. of 347 copies

"The three tracks are based on sound material by Frans de Waard published on a tape compilation for the 25th anniversary of the Korm Plastics label, which can be heard at the beginning of the album. As Frans de Waard explains in a spoken introduction to this album, listeners were invited to remix the material, preferably with 4-track cassette recorder. The music on “Mutatis Mutandis” is Mirko Uhlig’s response to this invitation, so it is a fitting gesture that the album is also released as a cassette in tribute to the important role that 4-track machines and the tape distribution scene have played in the development of experimental musics. Thanks to Frans de Waard’s guest vocal intro, the cassette is a “tape with the sound of its own making” similar to Robert Morris’s seminal sound sculpture “Box with the Sound of its Own Making”, but the music also makes for very pleasant listening on the CD version." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit

"The three tracks are based on sound material by Frans de Waard published on a tape compilation for the 25th anniversary of the Korm Plastics label, which can be heard at the beginning of the album. As Frans de Waard explains in a spoken introduction to this album, listeners were invited to remix the material, preferably with 4-track cassette recorder. The music on “Mutatis Mutandis” is Mirko Uhlig’s response to this invitation, so it is a fitting gesture that the album is also released as a cassette in tribute to the important role that 4-track machines and the tape distribution scene have played in the development of experimental musics. Thanks to Frans de Waard’s guest vocal intro, the cassette is a “tape with the sound of its own making” similar to Robert Morris’s seminal sound sculpture “Box with the Sound of its Own Making”, but the music also makes for very pleasant listening on the CD version." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit "Of course I am not the right person to say anything about Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf's 'Mutatis Mutandis', since a little silly thing from me as Freiband was the basis of this. An one minute piece released on a cassette, which people could use to remix, preferably using a four track cassette. There is an unreleased piece by Z'EV, but only Mirko Uhlig has spend a lot of time with it. He's back to using his old bandname, Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf, and there are three pieces here. One seems a straight remix of the original, followed by the title piece, which takes up thirty eight minutes. Here Uhlig takes the hiss of the original apart, adds sound effects, time stretches bits into long form drones, making an absolute great piece, ending a nice up in your face drone bit and even a short noise bit at the end - but hey of course I am not the right person to write such things. Close to the fire and such things. But to know such a short and hissy piece of loosely formed sounds can make such a great piece, I didn't know. Excellent, but of course I am not etc. And, best coup about it, its also released on cassette. Now there is something to bring to your four track machine. I know I will!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]

"ACM 1019: 3“ CD-R in mini DVD-style case Drone ambient at its lushest, most densely harmonic, is how best to describe the music of British artist Jacob Brant. Using sampled acoustic instruments and especially voices to create sonics vaguely akin to Ligeti’s ‘Lux aeterna’, this two-part composition shows his capability of colouring his dronescapes both in serene and ominous colours. “This piece of music is dedicated to those who protect us,” the sleeve notes say, and while the first part of the piece, ‘Rainmaker,’ seems to refer this to a sort of religious context, the title of the second part, ‘Whistleblower,’ proves that for all the blissful otherworldliness of his music, Brant is not blind to the ugliness of our world that needs whistleblowers in evil organisations to protect the rest of us from the worst. Jacob Brant certainly shares a lot of compositional methodology (use of acoustic sound sources etc.) with drone composers like Niblock and If, Bwana, but the structure of pieces like “Rainmaking” is more akin to artists like Mirko Uhlig and Tim Hecker and their more song-like, melody-oriented approaches." [label info] www.attenuationcircuit.de

"BOILING POOL consists of 953 fragments, 722 situations, 952 interruptions & countless Sources, intensions & beings. BOILING POOL was recorded at various places between 1971 & 2016. ..edited, mixed & produced at Polly´s Home, 23rd of may 2016 by robert schalinski. mastered by polly sinclair 2016. collage “the king ape feeds at dawn“ by robert schalinski . limited edition of 245 numbered copies . source donation ...derek holzer, antoin chessex, konrad schalinski, paul viebeg, nada & rasmus, leo solter, remo lamp, zeitkratzer, hilke schalinski, jürgen ploog, mirko uhlig, nocturne, herbert brauer, nam, nora below, joachim schönfeld … “Time is a human affliction; not a human invention but a prison. So what is the meaning of one hundred sixty million years without time? ...“ WSB 90%WASSER records WVINYL 023 / PLUS 086 side A: POOLING 444 fragments side B: BOILING 509 fragments CO were: jürgen eckloff rashad becker robert schalinski + rené lamp tom platt andrew loadman stea andreasson" www.90-prozent-wasser.de

Klang, schimmernd wie helles Licht! TIM HECKER ist nun auf Kranky gelandet, was seinem recht einmaligen Drone-Sound keinen Abbruch tut, im Gegenteil, HARMONY IN VIOLET erscheint uns wie der vorläufige Höhepunkt seines Schaffens: HECKER schafft es, seine digital-sphärischen Drones fast gleichzeitig wie einen monumentalen Noise-Sturm und doch höchst emotional harmonisch & zärtlich-melancholisch erklingen zu lassen.... "Hecker geht den auf seinen letzten Alben eingeschlagenen Weg weiter, baut ihn aus, erweitert ihn. Vielleicht ist "Harmony In Ultraviolet" nicht so hart wie das letzte Album "Mirages", aber Stücke wie "Chimeras" sind nicht weniger eindrucksvoll. Sie berauschen und entziehen den Hörer der Realität. Epische, weite und hocheindrucksvolle sphärische Momente brillieren da. Sie zeigen Heckers grosses Talent für Klangforschungen im Bereich der "spektralen" Musik. Überhaupt, Tim Heckers Klangkompositionen bewegen sich wie auf einem Farbspektrum: immer wieder werden neue Facetten und Färbungen abgetastet und herauspoliert. Feinfühlig, sensibel ebenso wie kalt, dunkel und zerfahren. Doch einerseits klingen die 15 neuen Stücke auf "Harmony In Ultraviolet" so bedeutungsvoll und geladen, andererseits aber so leicht zugänglich, durchschaubar... und bedeutungslos? Wie steckt man den Rahmen ab wenn man Heckers Musik beschreiben soll? Tim Hecker bewegt sich auf einem Feld von Ambient, Drone, elektronischer Musik, Noise und einem gefühlsmässigen Metal. "Harmony In Ultraviolet" ist ein Herbstalbum und erscheint genau zur richtigen Zeit. Denn zusammengefasst klingt es einfach wie der Herbstwind in all seinen Daseinsformen." [Creative-Eclipse] "Call Canadian Tim Hecker's fourth full-length release (and first for drone-oriented American label Kranky) "ambient for bombardiers." Like onetime-tourmates Isis, Hecker's focus is on the molten core of metal—the drones, distortions, compressed crunching, and industrial noises that course underneath its notes and riffs. Not surprisingly, one of his earliest releases deconstructed and distended Van Halen's "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love" to more ambient ends. The display of WWII-era portraiture on Harmony in Ultraviolet's cover suggests a cenotaph to downed pilots (in actuality it's an anti-fascist memorial), while the overhead shot of Bologna, Italy, on the interior forebodes the imminent firebombing. Hecker's focus, though, is on the interior of that flying fortress, a blurry suite of movements rife with churns and buzzes. At these stratospheric heights, the guitar's distinct qualities are made fuzzy and uncertain via laptop and digital effects. If you melted off the pop structure from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless with some molten magma, you'd have a good idea of Hecker's sound. Flow is maintained throughout, as Tim Hecker apparently understands that ever-tricky notion of fluid dynamics. He breaks up motifs (see "Palimpsest") with churning ebbs and digressions but keeps together the pinnacle suite, "Whitecaps of White Noise." And while Hecker has always been an adept craftsman, Harmony reveals his mastery of the idiom. Washes now feel oceanic, as epic and evocative ripples take shape out of unplumbed depths of feedback and distorted peals." [Andy Beta] "....Harmony is, paradoxically, Hecker's most dramatic and most oceanic record. The former implies twists, arc, and carefully planned change intended to evoke specific effects; the latter suggests stasis, immersion, and a state of dreamy contemplation. Harmony manages to be both these things by surprising as it mesmerizes, with Hecker reigning in or tempering any jarring effects just enough to keep the self-obliterating sense of endless drone intact. One key is that the tension never really dissipates, varying only in degree and quality. The opening "Rainbow Blood" sets the scene with a screeching and trebly drone, like an orchestra tuning up in the darkened theater where Rebecca del Rio performed in Mulholland Drive, and for the next 48 minutes, Harmony keeps the pulse elevated..." [Mark Richardson / Pitchforkmedia]

minimal ambience recorded 1974 ! Edition of 500 Ein wunderschön schimmernder, fast 30minütiger Drone von 1974 offenbart sich auf WHITE NIGHT, der aus vier sich umtänzelnden, schwingenden Tönen besteht. Obwohl hierzu Sinus-Töne auf einem MOOG-Synthesizer kreiert wurden, ergeben sich Obertöne und eine "wavende" Räumlichkeit, die das ganze eher nach Gitarrendrones klingen lassen, wie ihn heutzutage STARS OF THE LID oder ULTRASOUND machen... Erschienen auf dem Label von TOBIAS FISCHER (FEU FOLLET) und MIRKO UHLIG (ex AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF). "Back in 1974, one year before Brian Eno’s first landmark in Ambient-music, some young musician from New York wrote down a fragment of beauty’s hidden story with the minimal vocabulary of sine waves on the young black skin of a Moog synthesizer. The first release on CD features Richard Lainhart’s masterpiece in its original 29-minutes-version. There’s no single second to add, after this time everything is told though nothing has been said. Richard Lainhart about the work’s origin: "White Night" was composed and recorded in the late fall of 1974 at the State University of New York at Albany in the Coordinated Electronic Music Studio (CEMS). CEMS was created by my composition teacher Joel Chadabe with design and custom fabrication by Robert Moog and was, at the time, the largest integrated Moog modular synthesizer studio in the world. The piece consists of a dense, continuous four-note chord, each note in the chord recorded in a separate pass to one track on a Scully 4-track studio recorder. Each track consists of a single sine wave oscillator which is frequency modulated by a group of eight additional sine wave oscillators. Those oscillators are all tuned to different tones, each harmonically related to the fundamental chord tone. The amplitude of each harmonic oscillator is continuously varied under the control of an individual sequencer, and each sequencer is free-running - that is, the sequencers are not synchronized to each other, but rather running in their own independent timebases.The result is a continuously-changing complex harmonic waveform which modulates the frequency of the chord tone oscillator, generating a continuously-changing complex timbre based on the fundamental pitch of the note. The center tone of "White Night" is 212 Hz, slightly higher than the G below Middle C. The other notes create a chord consisting of a perfect fifth below the center tone, a major seventh just below the center tone, and a major second above the center tone. "White Night" was composed without reference to the standard A-440 tuning system, as we had no such pitch reference in the studio; I just picked a center tone that felt right, and went from there. As such, "White Night" lives in its own pitch world. The title "White Night" came about so: it was late December in upstate New York when I was finishing the piece, and a blizzard passed through town the night of the final mix. As I sat in the glow of the sequencers and tape decks in the University studio listening to the final version, I looked out the window and saw a security light on a building opposite the studio illuminating the blowing snow as it drifted off the roof. All I could see was the snow swirling in the light against the blackness; a moving painting continually drawn, erased, and redrawn, always changing, but always the same. It may sound bleak, but it wasn't - it was beautiful. It seemed to me that the image of the dancing whiteness perfectly matched the sound of the piece, and so I called it "White Night" to commemorate that evening of wind and snow." [label info] www.exovo.org

"Dass die Aufnahmen dieses in einer 300er Auflage wiederveröffentlichten Tapes schon fast zwanzig Jahre auf dem Buckel haben, hört man in keiner Sekunde! Da hat jemand eine wirklich sehr gute und feinfühlige Re-Mastering-Arbeit abgeliefert. MAEROR TRI sind ja immer noch in reduzierter Besetzung als TROUM unterwegs und Herr Knappe betreibt das allgemein bekannte Drone-Label mit angegliederten Vertrieb. MAEROR TRI waren sicher damals eine der interessantesten und auch aktivsten Industrial-Bands der Kassettenszene, die schnell den Sprung auf Vinyl und später auch auf CD vollzogen und hervorragend gemeistert haben. Ihre Musik ist sehr spirituell, meditativ und extrem fließend. Nicht wirklich Ambient, dafür gibt es einfach zu viele krachige Eruptionen, noch nicht Drone, was man heute darunter versteht, sondern eine Art psychedelisches Ritual, das positiv, neugierig und befreiend wirkt und in keinster Weise destruktiv oder mystisch verklärt ist, wie es ja seinerzeit sehr beliebt war. MAEROR TRI sind sicher eine der Wiederentdeckungen dieser Zeit und heute noch genauso spannend und unberechenbar wie damals. Vielleicht auch die einzigen legitimen Nachfahren des Krautrocks? Leider auch schon wieder lange Geschichte ... Wunderbar ..." [Carsten Vollmer, OX-Fanzine] "Born as an obscure cassette on Fool's Paradise (London 1993), this exclusive and essential work by Maeror Tri made a brief appearance earlier as a CD-r on EE Tapes (Saint Nix 2001) before it quickly vanished into oblivion. Due to popular demand it has finally been made available again as a limited CD release! Repolished in sound and housed in a new designed jacket, 'Yearning....' has now become of full value between such masterpieces as 'Myein' or 'Language of flames and sound'. Don't miss it this time....... Restoring/remastering work by Anders Peterson @ghostsounds.net Art design by Alan McClelland @eyelyft.blogspot.com" [label info] www.myspace.com/eetapes

"after a bunch of releases under the entia non alias on respected labels like u-cover, dataobscura, test tube, resting bell or sentient recognition archive, australian sound artist james mcdougall has recently decided to use his real name for his musical output, maybe to denote a small departure from his first releases who were a bit more on the glitch side. more focused on field recordings, these two tracks are a perfect example of the captivating soundscapes mcdougall creates..." [label info] www.taalem.com "James McDougall used to work as Entia Non and had releases on U-Cover, Dataobscura, Test Tube, Resting Bell and Sentient Recognition Archive but since some time he works under his own name. Here he has two lengthy pieces made from 'process bowed bass guitar and field recordings'. He moves out of the more collage like works of field recordings into more stretched out fields of mood music. Highly drone based - say the territory formerly inhabited by Uhlig - where the bass provides the drones - en masse - and where the field recordings seems to be a bit buried beneath and below. Slight crackles of leaves, that kind of work. Quite pleasant stuff really, if nothing really new under this particular drone sun. Crafted with some intelligence and with great care, that's for sure." [FdW / Vital Weekly]

".. Zwar gibt es auch hier wabernde, monotone Texturen galore, allerdings schieben sich hier auch immer wieder mal unterschwellig feine Melodien durch das Geräuschdickicht. Der übliche Shoegazer-Doom wird mit etwas feinfühligerem Ambient-Feeling zu brutalem, subtil variierenden Soundscapes verwoben. Wühlt innerlich ziemlich auf." [Creative-Eclipse] "Following a wave of recent reissues and re-recorded versions of older CD-R titles, Desire In Uneasiness is an album of all new material from the acclaimed Canadian dreamsludge weavers Nadja. Five colossal jams of eternally-fuzzy, ethereal dirge that are powered by the interlocking bass guitars of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker, who set loose a wave of monstrous grinding bass riffs amidst a fog of beautiful, swirling electronic effects. Desire also marks the first Nadja album to feature a live drummer in place of the drum machine programming that has driven the band's previous recordings, and the difference in the band's sound is apparent from the first crushing beats of album opener 'Disambiguation'. The organic drumming here takes Nadja's music into new realms of spacious jazzy exploration, dubby rhythms and cavernous psychedelia, while also delivering some of the band's most grooving, crushing hypno-bliss yet. Desire also stands out from the rest of the Nadja catalog for it's bizarre artwork that Aidan commisioned from his friend The Reverend Aitor. Aitor's bright, bold lines and textured magic marker artwork gives the gatefold jacket we've presented this disc in the look of a twisted children's book on acid, with weird images of chickens, trees growing through chairs, and more. The package is a sturdy 4-panel gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton, and it looks killer." [label info] www.crucialblast.net

"Die unvergleichlichen THE NECKS mit ihrem nunmehr 17. Album ihrer 26-jährigen Karriere. THE NECKS haben etwas geschafft, was nur wenigen Künstlern gelingt: einen singulären Stil zu kreieren, dabei eine ganz unverkennbare eigene Handschrift entwickelt und doch mit jedem neuen Album nicht einfach bewährte Rezepturen neu aufgekocht, sondern durch feinfühlige Neujustierung der Parameter neue Nuancen offenbart. Das leitende Motiv bei „Open“ waren – nach dem vergleichsweise dynamischen, stellenweise eruptiven „Mindset“ von 2011 – Stille und meditative Klarheit, die etwa „Drive By“ innewohnte. CHRIS ABRAHAMS (Piano), TONY BUCK (Drums) und LLOYD SWANTON (Bass) setzen im Laufe der 68 Minuten einen repetitiv-hypnotisierenden Klangfl uss aus leichtfüßig swingendem (Post-)Jazz, repetitiven Grooves à la JAKI LIEBEZEIT (CAN) und elektronischen Sounds in Gang, der elegant innerhalb der selbst gewählten Koordinaten mäandert und bei aller scheinbaren Reduktion und Schlichtheit unter der subtilen Oberfl äche eine komplexe Struktur offenlegt. Wie immer bei den Australiern. // OPEN will be the Necks’ 17th album, and the 11th released by ReR. Here the band returns to the territory for which it is best known: a single, glacially mutating, long-form piece that runs for a little over an hour. The previous record, “Mindset”, said bassist Lloyd Swanton, “reached some pretty intense levels at times, and though we never overtly discussed it, I think that on Open, by contrast, all three of us were taken by the idea of working in a field of significant stillness. At least, after a couple of days’ recording, it became clear that the music was leading us in this direction.” Feeding into the ground plan are floating arco harmonics, minimalist funk, iterative piano figures, subliminal and liminal pulses, twittering electronics and at one point an arco bass choir. It is unequivocally a studio work, with layer laid on layer, while still, miraculously, remaining architecturally spare." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com "The Necks might be our favorite jazz group, most of their records/performances being single hour long pieces, always a lush, patient, slow build, all texture and mood, super dynamic, but in a way most bands can't pull off, just bass drums and piano, their sound dense and dark, doleful and lovely. The last few Necks records have found this minimal band getting a little maximal, their slow build eventually erupting into something dense and driving and almost psychedelic, as if in response to that, Open finds the group and their most hushed and abstract, with the first few minutes featuring a field of tinkling chimes, spare pointillist piano, and only the occasional flurry of bass notes, spacious and mesmeric, as we usually find ourselves saying about these guys, we would have been happy if there was no slow build at all, and the whole record was just this glistening, glimmering sprawl of abstract free jazz drift. But there is a method to their madness, and at about the eight minute mark, the song shifts dramatically, an electronic pulse, some simple hi-hat rhythms, the occasional bass drum, and nothing else, weirdly hypnotic and barely there, the sound soon joined by a buzzing hum, a snare crack here, some bass thrum there, the sound blossoming into a sprawl of subtle tribal drumming, and more shimmering chimes, soon the piano comes back in, and the song begins to take a more jazz-like shape, albeit one that's still quite free and abstract, the lilting piano melody offsetting the busy drumming, the sound shifting again soon after, with a snare roll that sounds almost like radio static, the bass and low notes on the piano unfurling a dense rumble, those chimes tying everything together again, before settling into something much more tranquil and serene, only to return to that strange electronic pulse / hi-hat section, which slips from jazzy shimmer, to abstract free form almost-psychedelia, the snare locked into another roll, adding a buzzy thrum, the sound finally settling into some hushed, laid back jazziness, wreathed in a dreamy droned out shimmer, gradually fading to silence. Recommended, as always!" [Aquarius Records]

"The release of a new Necks album is always news. This is our 12th to date - and their 18th. While most ensembles are driven by personalities, the Necks are powered by an idea. A very large and simple idea - which now seems completely obvious…. but only because the Necks thought of it and made it work. Now their pleasure (and ours) is sequentially to re-imagine and explore that idea – the prime directive of which seems to be to be that each unfolding step and every passing detail of any performance be allowed to evolve organically out of the musical conditions established at its moment of departure. In other words, we are in the territory of chaos and catastrophe theory; of hurricanes and butterfly wings… And, since one can never step twice into the same river, each beginning has led to wildly unpredictable and variant outcomes; and imperceptibly: you never hear the changes until somehow they have already happened. “We end up, Lloyd Swanton writes, ‘in a very different place from whatever our initial notion … had been.” In the case of Vertigo, we are dropped straight into an almost Feldmanesque musical universe, in which sounds - seemingly disconnected - are already there; creating space rather than inhabiting it. Then, without trying, they mutate. Not mechanically and not according to any pre-determined process - because it’s always clear that what we hear is being played by human beings; that it’s music. A special kind of music that is not pushy or demanding or demonstrative, but rather co-operative, spatial, ambiguous. A music that leaves room for its listeners." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com "Die unvergleichlichen THE NECKS mit dem nunmehr 18. Album ihrer 28-jährigen Karriere. THE NECKS haben etwas geschafft, was nur wenigen Künstlern gelingt: einen singulären Stil zu kreieren, dabei eine ganz unverkennbare eigene Handschrift zu entwickeln und doch mit jedem neuen Album nicht einfach bewährte Rezepturen neu aufzukochen, sondern durch feinfühlige Neujustierung der Parameter neue Nuancen zu offenbaren. CHRIS ABRAHAMS (Piano), TONY BUCK (Drums) und LLOYD SWANTON (Bass) setzen auch auf ihrem neuen Album „Vertigo“ den Maßstab sehr hoch an. Der prägende repetitiv-hypnotisierende Klangfluss aus leichtfüßig swingendem (Post-)Jazz, repetitiven Grooves à la JAKI LIEBEZEIT (CAN) und elektronischen Sounds, der viele ihrer alten Alben prägte, ist auch auf dem aktuellen Album zu hören. Elegant und subtil erschafft das Trio aus Australien hier abermals ein Meisterwerk. Wie kaum einer anderen Band gelingt es den Musikern, dem Hörer einen „Weg“ vorzugeben, ihm aber genug Freiraum für eigenes Hören und Interpretieren zu lassen. Ganz große Kunst!" [Broken Silence]

"The release of a new Necks album is always news. This is our 12th to date - and their 18th. While most ensembles are driven by personalities, the Necks are powered by an idea. A very large and simple idea - which now seems completely obvious…. but only because the Necks thought of it and made it work. Now their pleasure (and ours) is sequentially to re-imagine and explore that idea – the prime directive of which seems to be to be that each unfolding step and every passing detail of any performance be allowed to evolve organically out of the musical conditions established at its moment of departure. In other words, we are in the territory of chaos and catastrophe theory; of hurricanes and butterfly wings… And, since one can never step twice into the same river, each beginning has led to wildly unpredictable and variant outcomes; and imperceptibly: you never hear the changes until somehow they have already happened. “We end up, Lloyd Swanton writes, ‘in a very different place from whatever our initial notion … had been.” In the case of Vertigo, we are dropped straight into an almost Feldmanesque musical universe, in which sounds - seemingly disconnected - are already there; creating space rather than inhabiting it. Then, without trying, they mutate. Not mechanically and not according to any pre-determined process - because it’s always clear that what we hear is being played by human beings; that it’s music. A special kind of music that is not pushy or demanding or demonstrative, but rather co-operative, spatial, ambiguous. A music that leaves room for its listeners." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com "Die unvergleichlichen THE NECKS mit dem nunmehr 18. Album ihrer 28-jährigen Karriere. THE NECKS haben etwas geschafft, was nur wenigen Künstlern gelingt: einen singulären Stil zu kreieren, dabei eine ganz unverkennbare eigene Handschrift zu entwickeln und doch mit jedem neuen Album nicht einfach bewährte Rezepturen neu aufzukochen, sondern durch feinfühlige Neujustierung der Parameter neue Nuancen zu offenbaren. CHRIS ABRAHAMS (Piano), TONY BUCK (Drums) und LLOYD SWANTON (Bass) setzen auch auf ihrem neuen Album „Vertigo“ den Maßstab sehr hoch an. Der prägende repetitiv-hypnotisierende Klangfluss aus leichtfüßig swingendem (Post-)Jazz, repetitiven Grooves à la JAKI LIEBEZEIT (CAN) und elektronischen Sounds, der viele ihrer alten Alben prägte, ist auch auf dem aktuellen Album zu hören. Elegant und subtil erschafft das Trio aus Australien hier abermals ein Meisterwerk. Wie kaum einer anderen Band gelingt es den Musikern, dem Hörer einen „Weg“ vorzugeben, ihm aber genug Freiraum für eigenes Hören und Interpretieren zu lassen. Ganz große Kunst!" [Broken Silence] "We've lost count at this point of how many albums The Necks have released, but we haven't lost sight of the way they have remained on top of their game with each and every release. There is no such thing as a bad or mediocre release by Austrialian avant-jazz minimalists The Necks. Vertigo keeps the streak alive, and in many ways it's one of the darker releases by The Necks, filled with hypnotic and pulsating piano and soulful free-jazz like percussion. In one 43 minute track they remind us once again they are among the most intense and talented music makers on this planet!" [Aquarius Records]