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Chris Abrahams
The Vampires: Nightjar
by Pat Youngspiel
Australian saxophonist Jeremy Rose's admiration for minimalist trio The Necks is of great depth, to the extent that he published an essay on the group, entitled Memory and Mindfulness in the Musical Rituals of the Necks," examining musical ritualistic practices beyond the African American realm capable of scaffolding transcendent experience." And he is not the only Vampire to have previously collaborated with a Neck. Besides his own ethno-improvisational endeavor with the trio Vazesh, featuring The Necks bassist Lloyd Swanton and ...
read moreThe Necks: Three
by Mike Jurkovic
With their stubbornly spiky, hold-onto-your-hat mindset firmly rooted, a high fever runs wild on Three, The Necks' twenty-first release in its thirty-three year, unhindered-by-genre career. It starts like most of the trio's existential, kaleidoscopic excursions do: some minimalist point of blurred melodic frenzy is acted upon and the rest becomes an amalgam of theory and system... jazz, rock, industrial, whatever suits the moment. It can be irresponsibly reckless, remotely ambient, soulfully rewarding, cantankerous, glaringly indulgent or plain brilliant at any ...
read moreThe Necks: Three
by Mark Sullivan
Live performances by Australian free-improvising trio The Necks typically take the form of a single, slowly growing and morphing mass of sound. On recordings the musicians give themselves permission to sculpt the sound, so it is not a real-time document. Nevertheless their two previous albums Vertigo (Northern Spy Records, 2015) and Body (Northern Spy Records, 2018) both presented a single long track apiece, paralleling their live practice. This time the program is broken into three parts, each with its own ...
read moreChris Abrahams & Sabine Vogel: Kopfuberwelle
by John Eyles
Kopfüberwelle features the duo of German flautist Sabine Vogel and The Necks' pianist, Chris Abrahams, uncharacteristically on pipe organ. Of the six tracks, the first five were recorded in May 2010 in St. Annenkirche in Zepernick and the sixth in June 2009 in Potsdam, where Vogel holds a university teaching position. The rationale for Abrahams' switch of instrument from piano to organ is explained by the duo's explorations of both differences and similarities between the flute and organ." There are ...
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