The Necks may be the most eccentric, decidedly uncommercial jazz trio ever, but they make uncommonly beautiful music together, writes Jim Carroll

IT MAY take you a little time to get your head around The Necks. For the past 16 years, these three Australian musicians have been meeting up every so often. It may be to record an album, it may be to take their piano, bass and drums routine around to whatever clubs or halls will have them. Then, without further ado or rehearsals or preparations, they'll begin to play.

What emerges is magical and mesmerising. Each performance consists of one track, if you could call it that, which lasts about 60 minutes. Depending on the time of day or night and the room you're in, the music you will hear could be fast or slow, hard or gentle, funky or minimal, new or old. It rises and falls, taking you to places which may be on the contemporary jazz roadmap, but which are rarely visited. Their albums, too, such as the current Drive By or 2001's beautiful Aether, are adventures in sound, building and evolving into the tastiest of shapes.

Bassist Lloyd Swanton admits the plan was somewhat different when they formed in Sydney in 1988. "When we started The Necks, we were quite clear that not only did we not want to push it commercially, we in fact had no intention of even playing in public. It was only after six months or so of intensive private rehearsing that we decided to go public.

"I'm sure we're not the first band to have rehearsed intensively for six months, but I'm not sure how many had done so with no intention of performing the music publicly, so I think that set us apart from other bands and established something between the three of us that endures to this day. Somehow the concept was all the more pure because we had no grand ambitions for it initially."

That the trio have survived the years intact is all the more remarkable considering the pull on their time from other projects. Swanton fronts The Catholics and has performed with countless other groups, while pianist Chris Abrahams has worked with everyone from Midnight Oil to The Triffids and The Church. To add to the complexities, drummer Tony Buck is now based in Berlin.

Buck believes the outfit have bested the trials of time and geography because of trust: "I think we all see the Necks as a special thing that we don't want to get into situations that misrepresent it or forces it into situations that are not exactly sympathetic to our aims or endeavours with the music.

"I think these things have become stronger, or at least been confirmed over time. I think it is very important with the music we make and how the band is run that we have faith and trust the decisions we all make."

Over the years, of course, The Necks' music has evolved. While Swanton remarks that "the fact of us having to amuse ourselves and an audience night after night for all these years means things have certainly transformed", Buck believes these changes are also down to other elements. "Over the years we have been exposed to and become interested in many different approaches to music making, both through the different music we hear and the different musicians we have met and collaborate with over the years.

"In some ways, the basic idea and the way we work with our material hasn't changed that much since we started, but we are always finding new sounds or approaches that we are integrating into that basic way of working, without trying to dilute the fundamental idea."

Yet musical diversity was evident from the start and has continued to exert an influence. Buck recalls that they were listening to a lot of African, reggae and soul music when they first came together and says that changing attitudes to technology and dance music have also had an effect on The Necks.

"Dance music, sampling and ambient music have had a big affect on the way people accept repetition, slow change and multi-layering sounds in music. There have also been some pretty big changes in the kind of textures, structural forms and aesthetics that some improvisers I am involved with here in Europe are interested in and working with. These are things that weren't really a big part of my musical life, say, 10 years ago."

Despite their initial reluctance to play live, Swanton and Buck now regard live performance as vital. "It's the touchstone for us," says Swanton. "The task of conjuring those sounds with just the three acoustic instruments is always a humbling one and we have no more idea than the audience as to where the piece is going to end up in 45 minutes or an hour.

"One of the things I love about playing with The Necks is that, because we have no preconceived ideas of what we want to play, there is theoretically no such thing as a 'bad' sounding room. We can sound out the acoustics of a venue in the soundcheck and the initial minutes of a piece, and then just work with that.

"As to the audience, so long as they're not throwing things at us, we don't notice much from them until the applause at the end of the first piece. That gives us a pretty good idea of how we're going down."

This audience is as diverse as they come, people drawn from different backgrounds looking for different things from the performance or album.

"I think that people can grasp what we're doing even if they don't have a lot of musical knowledge," says Buck. "But yet I like to feel that they can hear that there is an integrity there. It's not just dumbing down to reach the lowest common denominator. I don't think we ever set out to reach any particular audience, and I think it would be the death of our music if we started doing that."

Swanton seems intrigued that no one else has followed The Necks down their particular road. "I hear some elements of our music in some groups, which is very gratifying, but it's really the surface trimmings, and not our fundamental methods. I would love to hear some other musicians using our exact method, because it's virtually foolproof and there are as many potential outcomes as people using it."

But, even if no one else is doing it, The Necks continue to set the scene for free-flowing jazz to the extent that it now overshadows their other projects and collaborations.

"Although we only play maybe 50 concerts even in a good year, with booking the tours and running the record label, it's pretty much full-time for us," says Swanton. "All three of us would consider The Necks to be our main gig, and I think we always felt this in an artistic sense, from very early on. But now, of course, in terms of profile, it definitely is."

The Necks play the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin on November 23rd and the Sonic Lab, Belfast on November 24th