The ability of Chris Abrahams to stretch and disable time is matched by only a few still living. With The Necks, he is unstoppable, and on his own, he is much the same but different. The bass tone in the opener, “Costume,” is from a black digital place, inhuman and severe. The pulse, though, is human, and Abrahams plays piano through that, as bells clank and a digital wind runs beneath the pitches. Abrahams likes it in this space, where we are not in the mists that become “ambient,” or in the space where songs are implied through predictable change. This is the mesa he has created and tended, very much alone, or close to it. A truly meditative place, not for sleeping.

– Sasha Frere-Jones