#chris abrahams

[nofatclips]

Object of Projection by Lawrence English from the album Cruel Optimism

[caviarsonoro]

Lawrence English · Stephen Vitiello · Chris Abrahams: with Chris (Trinity 2025).

"With Chris" opens Trinity (American Dreams Records, 2025), the third collaborative album by Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello. The record gathers five pieces, each one built around a different guest who takes on the role of third musician (Chris Abrahams (The Necks), Marina Rosenfeld, Brendan Canty, Aki Onda, and the late Steve Roden), hence the titles: "With Chris, " "With Marina, " "With Brendan"… Abrahams, on piano, is the first of them, and at nearly fourteen minutes he also delivers the album's longest piece.

On "With Chris, " Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello raise an architecture of low drones, sustained resonances, and minimal electronic incidents, over which Chris Abrahams lays a piano of extraordinary restraint. His notes, sparse and precise, appear like lunar reflections or incandescent particles suspended above a dark sonic matter. There is something almost pointillist in the way he intervenes: each keystroke holds on to its identity for a few instants, lights up a stretch of the landscape, and slowly fades into its depths.

Rather than unfolding as a conventional composition, the piece is a space that transforms as we inhabit it. At first, the piano seems to order its surroundings, tracing outlines over the low frequencies and the textured electronics; later, that separation begins to dissolve. Abrahams stops occupying the foreground and gradually merges into the electroacoustic fabric, while silence exerts a pressure as decisive as sound itself. The music holds a delicate balance between consonance and dissonance, between fragility and weight, without ever fully resolving in either direction.

From that slow absorption comes the peculiar melancholy of "With Chris": sober, ambiguous, and free of any sentimentality. Each note already carries the intimation of its own disappearance, like a light dimming as it sinks toward the depths. The three musicians end up forming a single breath, a sonic organism in which roles are exchanged and the smallest gestures take on an unexpected intensity.

When the piece ends, it offers no real closure, but rather the impression that the dialogue continues somewhere beyond our hearing

[adrianoesteves]

[madflies]

Studio albums

Mr Uddich-Schmuddich Goes To Town (1982)

Law Of Nature (1984)

Ghosts Of An Ideal Wife (1985)

EPs, Singles

1980: Laughing Clowns; Sometimes, The Fire Dance....

1981: Theme From 'Mad Flies, Mad Flies'; 3

1983: Everything That Flies...

1984: Eternally Yours; Just Because I Like / Crystal Clear

Live recordings

Photos, vids, album cover art, gig flyers...

+ Ed's other stuff

[radiophd]

robbie avenaim / chris abrahams / jim denley -- weft

[musicmakesyousmart]

Chris Abrahams & Mike Cooper - Praxis

Room40

2020

[dustedmagazine]

The Necks — Three (Northern Spy)

Three by The Necks

The Necks make music feel infinite. Pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Tony Buck may be wielding the instruments of jazz, but they create the kind of hypnotic, long-form pieces more familiar in the fields of ambient, drone and experimental rock. On their 21st album, Three, their usual album-length evolution is divided into three 20-minute acts, much like 2006’s excellent Chemist.

Opener “Bloom” plunges the listener headfirst into a dense thicket of tangled percussion and driving bass. At times the percussion sounds like being chased by a combine harvester or an enormous egg whisk. Around the five-minute mark a pair of synthesizer arpeggios starts up, wriggling through the spaces around the other instruments like an electric eel. Considering how busy the mix is, it’s amazing how much space each instrument seems to inhabit. In such an ecosystem, each musical organism takes its own turn at prominence.  

If “Bloom” is a teeming rainforest of sound, “Lovelock” is a desert — snare rolls like rain drumming on a tin roof; clusters of high piano notes glimmering like stars; bowed bass like the wind slowly blowing open a creaky gate. It’s a gripping high-wire walk in which the safety of solid ground stretches so far into the distance as to be rendered a mirage.  

Finale “Further” has the loose, percussive rattle of “Bloom,” but scattered around a smoky jazz-bar groove that swings irresistibly. Abrahams’ playing is especially beautiful here, taking full advantage of the rhythm section’s solid foundation to springboard into some aching harmonic suspensions. Fittingly, the music fades out at the end, suggesting that it could stretch on indefinitely, roving wherever Abrahams, Buck and Swanton choose to take it.  

Tim Clarke

[moredarkthanshark]

Brian Eno with (left to right) Karl Hyde, Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck, Jon Hopkins, Leo Abrahams and Lloyd Swanton in Sydney, Australia, June 2009