And we’re back! This week’s Sunday Listen is ‘Silverwater’ by The Necks, a piece that quietly rearranges how we think about time, attention, and what music can be when it stops trying to perform for us.

The Necks are cult band formed in Sydney in the late 1980s and have since become one of the most respected long-form improvising groups in the world who are admired equally by jazz musicians, minimalist composers, ambient listeners, and experimental rock audiences. Their music sits somewhat unclassifiably in between and beyond all these.

Pieces typically unfold over 20–60 minutes, built from a simple starting idea: a pulse, a harmonic colour, a rhythmic texture. From there, change happens almost imperceptibly. No solos. No choruses. No climaxes in the conventional sense. Each performance unfolds newly for the first time and is then never heard again.

Crucially, The Necks don’t pre-compose in the traditional way. There are no scores, no structures agreed in advance. A piece begins with someone starting something, and the others listening — deeply — and responding. In Silverwater, almost 20 minutes go by without anything like what you’d call a conventional tune or melody being played. It’s only 30 minutes in until the full band really starts to swing and play as a full ensemble, and even then it isn’t long before everything collapses in on itself and we’re back in another holding space.

It’s in these spaces that the heart of this musical project truly beats. The content isn’t in what happens, but how slowly it happens, almost without our immediate comprehension. It’s a music that ticks to the beat not of the wall clock, but the slow murmuring planetary shifts of deep time; it’s something like try to watch a flower gradually turn its head towards the sun.

‘Silverwater’ is a particularly beautiful example of this approach. It grows patiently, almost shyly. Much modern music functions as a commodity: short, repeatable, attention-grabbing, designed to fit playlists, algorithms, and metrics. This sits firmly at the opposite pole. It’s resists everything about the way we normally experience music. It’s something you step into rather than consume, like a landscape, or a body of water. You don’t finish it so much as leave it, feeling perhaps, slightly altered. What’s remarkable about all this is how emotionally rich this journey feels without ever telling you what to feel. There’s no overt drama, no narrative arc, just a quiet fascination that doesn’t need spectacle.

In a culture of speed, optimisation, and constant output, The Necks offer something quietly radical: patience, trust, focus, careful attention, being present before the need to impress. So put it on in the background one day. Let it unfold. Don’t skip. Try not to multitask too much. Let the music do what it does best: take time.

Happy Sunday all!