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‘People falling asleep wasn’t that unusual’: experimental pioneers the Necks on four decades of improvising

They never rehearse. Their music is borderline indescribable. And their live shows have become the stuff of legend. Now on their 29th album, Bleed, the trio look back on creating a career from thin air

The Washington Post, in 2020, was slower to catch on, describing one of their songs as “umpteen metric tons of bouncing-clinking stuff being discarded into an abyss of stairs” (complimentary, of course). There were around eight months of “rehearsals” at the University of Sydney’s music department with no thought of playing live, until the person who allowed them access to the room invited them to perform at an afternoon concert series. Photograph: Nabeeh SamaanReally, the Necks were just inviting the audience to enter the same zone they were aiming for: a trance, where the instruments appeared to play them, instead of the other way around.

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