The Necks
Pop Will Eat Himself

Nothing professional. This is just a passionate-stylistic analysis of:

The Necks - "Pop Will Eat Himself"
Second part of the concert held at The Factory Theatre in Sydney, 2008

My demerit. It’s terrible to "break down" into 5 pieces a 45-minute unified work built on stage. However, it will help to catch a glimpse of how they manage to sculpt their umpteenth musical gem. The advice to the reader is to take an hour and listen to one of the albums from the collection.

My merit: I do everything as in a psychoanalytic session. I associate. I let thoughts flow. I write while listening. I amplify. I hunt for memories. You can do it too. Try it.

In the German language, the word Gestalt means "form, configuration" and refers to the concept of "formal and structural totality". This word is the foundation of Gestalt psychology, according to which mental processes of knowledge and perceptual experience organize into a totality that is different from the sum of the individual components: "background/foreground/unit", as Astime observes in comment 8.
In a dreamy listening of a piece by The Necks, you can directly experience this way the mind works.

The three work together, perfectly integrated like in a Gestalt. More: their sound is unified, though built with imperceptible associative contributions from each.
They do minimalism in a jazz environment.

Let's name the three: Chris Abrahams on piano (the most introverted), Tony Buck on drums (volcanic power in its natural state), Lloyd Swanton on double bass (the generous, the connective, the sociable, the assertive).

A musical artwork of almost an hour necessarily relies on a path that has an introduction, some internal hearts and a closing end.
In the end, we too, living beings, are like music.

1. Introduction

You are entering an imaginary world.
You must do it with lightness and an open spirit.
Swanton creates the mood, Buck builds the environment (hear those castanets running on the drum!) and Abrahams introduces dynamic elements.
Focus on the blend of sounds and the slow progression. The crescendo will be marked by the low keys of the piano, in turn supported by the drum carpet and held together by the vibrations of the strings.
(I apologize for the break: I will find a way, dear reader, to let you hear the whole thing. Here we work on parts).

2. First heart: we wanted to bring you here

We are around the 11th minute.
The sound structure becomes faster and more dramatic.
The means are an exciting interplay of great affection among the musicians.
The effect is what I would call "hypnosis with awareness".
We are there.
We are inside a lateral realm of reality.
It is the center of the Mandala.
But as in Mandalas, there are lateral paths (up/down, east/west).
And how do they do it?
With variations. Arabesques, ornaments, sub-tonalities, primary and secondary harmonics.
Here we are experiencing the experience of "being inside" their imaginary world. The one they wanted to bring us to. And yet it is "you" ("I"), with your subjectivity being there.
There is collaboration, there is relationship here. There is empathy.
The archetype of the Fantastic (just invented) suggests: "There is magic ... it’s like being in a fairy tale".
More simply, the first heart whispers: "it’s nice to be here".
The beneficent sprite is Abrahams.
 
3. Second heart: in the middle of the journey ...

We are at the 25th minute.
We walk, we run.
Life is a flash.
We must see everything that is possible.
Enjoy the moments.
Carpe diem ... Carpe diem ... Time flies ...
We need energy. We need libido.
We need dynamics, living in contact with statics.
Who is the energetic sprite?
It is Carl Abrahams: controlled vertigo.
He is the one who makes the piano notes run, also feeding from Swanton’s bow.
We run here.
There is no time.
"We are late", as the white rabbit says in Alice's Wonderland.
There are no peaks or valleys.
I would say we are on a "durable peak".
I associate with the orgasmic plateau.
It lasts longer, though.
 
4. Third heart: the paths are blazing

We are at the 32nd minute.
Now you can try the impossible: settle over a volcanic crater. From the cups, you will observe the bubbling lava.
The psyche is incandescent, the flames rise and retreat.

"Their end is marked in their beginning
and their beginning in the end,
as the flame is united with the burning ember".
_{(Sepher Jtzirah, I, 8)}

It takes power to do so.
And who is the power sprite?
It is Tony Buck: a phenomenon of nature. A human volcano.
His is the powerful, percussion-based, strong, safe, relentless, accessible beat.
With that drumming, you can sit at the edge of the crater as if you were on the edge of a placid New Age river.
But the sprites cooperate. The sprites arrive together, even if each has a role.
And indeed Abrahams works on the harmonics and Swanton - the assertive one is at the service of the whole. He has taken on the humble and necessary task of "holding together".
Only in this way can you stand in front of the lava as in front of a romantic stream from a Schubertian German Lied (that of the Beautiful Maid of the Mill).
 
5. Going back home

In musical syntax there is a rhetorical figure called "deceptive cadence".
Wikipedia explains that: "A deceptive cadence creates a moment of suspension that increases interest in the composition, as the sensation of a conclusion is unfulfilled and also allows the composer to add one or two phrases to close everything".
I say it in my words.
The deceptive cadence works like this: you are at home ... You leave home (in our case with this piece by The Necks) ... You walk ... You walk ... You see ... You observe ... You experience ... You are outside the house .... You are in another space ... then you return and realize you never left home.
This is what the gestalt Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton evoke for me.
Going back home. Or rather, you never even left.

It was a journey into the Imaginary.

It was a Reverie.