These musings also tell us something of the richly textured compositions of Australian improvising trio The Necks. The group use piano, bass and percussion to draw the listener into minutely detailed sound worlds. Rhythmic and harmonic repetition is often coloured by pastel hued melodies to form a hypnotic wash of sound.

The Necks' most recent album Open is comprised of one lengthy composition with slowly evolving textures and timbres that require close listening for interwoven details to be revealed. Throughout the piece transitions between sections are beautifully timed with a more atonal midsection moving the music further from neat resolution and towards Kerouac's "unspeakable visions of the individual". Lovely stuff that is guaranteed to put the listener in a contemplative frame of mind.

In live performance and on record the feel is organic and open-ended but The Necks are also greatly attuned to using studio technology to assemble their extended compositions.

Pianist Chris Abrahams explains that the last few albums, "have seen us move to a less chronological method of recording, in that things that we record at the start of the recording process need not end up being at the start of the finished album. We no longer feel the need to do one hour takes either. Nowadays we record digitally to a software program that enables us to move material around. Open saw us expand on this."

In the studio The Necks play around with various production techniques similar to Jamaican dub producers and "non"-musicians like Brian Eno using the studio as an instrument. But in live performance spontaneous creativity is absolute. The three musicians take to the stage without preconceived ideas and I wonder if a calm state of mind is required to determine the flow of the performance.

"I have to say that when I'm on stage with The Necks I am in a very calm and focused state of mind," Abrahams says. "There is also a tension that can be built up through retrained playing and I feel that people in the audience can sometimes experience this; they can struggle with the slowness of the unfolding before they give themselves over to it and can experience feelings of relief and elation at doing so."

I have seen The Necks play a number of times at The Street Theatre and I always leave a performance feeling a little better about the world. I'm sure others feel the same which in part explains why The Necks are so highly regarded around the world.

I ask Chris Abrahams whether he ever feels any pressure to play in a certain way. "I think no matter how hard we try, we will always sound like The Necks," he says. "The relationship is so complex and strong that I can't see how we would go about avoiding this. The nature of our development hasn't really involved jettisoning anything in order to 'move on'. Things we'll play on this tour will sound like things we played back at the Old Darlington School in 1987. No one has ever come up to me and said 'it's a pity you no longer play like you did when I came to see you 20 years ago.' I don't feel pressure from the public to play a certain way. People seem to have accepted that our live performances offer a very different experience to our studio albums."

THE NECKS

When: February 28, 8pm

Where: The Street Theatre, Acton

Tickets: $35 available from thestreet.org.au