For those lucky enough to have seen The Necks perform live on more than one occasion, their records may begin to sound like arbitrarily captured moments; improvisations no more or less remarkable than the last, a water treading exercise in minutely building atmospherics. Mindset is their 16th record and, compared with much of their output throughout the ’00s, it doesn’t shed new light on their approach. That might sound like a misnomer for a vaunted improvised jazz group, but The Necks’ form of experimentation is too subtle, perhaps, to register from album to album.

The first of two tracks, ‘Rumjungle’ is a galloping melee of hi-hats, pattern-less piano notes and knocking double bass strings. Bearing a passing similarity to their 1999 LP Hanging Gardens, it’s all chariots overturned and horses ablaze. Panning synth atmospherics appear late in the piece like some strobing visitation, and the track tends to heave and lurch with subtle tempo variations and Chris Abrahams’ increasingly discordant piano.

If ‘Rumjungle’ demonstrates a side of the Necks better suited to the stage than on record, ‘Daylights’ is the three-piece at their eerily quiet and dramatic best, tailored – despite the song title - for the 4am crisis hour. A practice in still-life noir not dissimilar to their 1997 soundtrack to The Boys, drummer Tony Buck is relegated to tensely hitting a block for the first passage of the piece, holding the yet-established tempo by a thread while Abraham’s minimalist, music-box piano plays out listlessly. All the while Lloyd Swanson’s bass rattles intrusively, like a menacing midnight tap-tap at the door.

‘Daylights’ also demonstrates the band’s knack with the stealth crescendo: by the time it abruptly ends in a free jazz tantrum the growth has barely registered, like a gradual time-lapsed blossoming. Even if they aren’t evolving per se, The Necks are in the enviable position of having their own sound and approach, so it’s for the best they explore it so meticulously.

by Shaun Prescott