While you’d be hard pressed to say that The Necks’ drummer Tony Buck is confined within any grids or limitations of his instrument as the stickman for that band (I’ve literally seen the dude pour cutlery onto his drum kit in a performance), Buck is nonetheless stepping out from the trio to release his first solo work in ages (since 2001, to be exact — thanks Discogs!).
Lawrence English’s illimitable Room40 label will have the honors of releasing Buck’s first solo effort in sixteen years on September 1. The new album is called Unearth — quite possibly a companion piece to The Necks’ Unfold from earlier this year — and GUESS WHAT? It finds Buck building sonic landscapes of guitar, synths, and field recordings around his iconic drumming.
English attributes the creation of the album to a conversation the pair had over dinner after a gig a few years back and says that “the piece represents an exploration of and meditation on, the duality and paradox of time itself. Moments of fragile and infinitesimal sounds contrast with droning, dense layers; melodic and harmonic elements play out against backgrounds of texture and noise.” Sounds like that must have been one hell of a dinner.
You can pre-order the album from Room40 now, then check out the sample video — a truly epic night battle between our mammalian brethren and their (clearly) malevolent arachnid archenemies — and the record’s cover art down below.
