He is a founding mainstay member of experimental, jazz trio the Necks (1987–present), collaborated with Melanie Oxley as a soul pop duo (1989–2003), and has issued ten solo albums.
[1][2][3] Abrahams, on keyboards, formed jazz group Benders, in 1980 in Sydney with Dale Barlow on tenor saxophone, Louis Burdett on drums and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar.
[4] Their next album, Jerusalem Bay (1998), had Hamish Stuart on drums (ex-Ayers Rock, Wig World, the Catholics) and Mike Bukowski on trumpet (ex-Ten Part Invention).
[4] In 2001 the pair performed Abrahams' music for a radio travel documentary, South Island, which was broadcast by ABC Classic FM on 6 October 2003.
[16] The Sydney Morning Herald's John Shand found, "his lyrics are often bleaker than their past work, it is not a despairing bleakness, but one bolstered by stoicism, wit, hope and a love of beauty.
[20] Cyclic Defrost's Max Schaefer noticed, "Technically formidable and conceptually refined, [he] pays homage to the piano by drawing it into tightly articulated and highly personalized forms.
"[24] His next effort, Memory Night (2013), shows that "even at his most ominous is also quite listenable, creating jumbled, but still quite accessible soundscapes" according to 4ZZZ's Chris Cobroft.
[25] Abrahams has worked as a session musician on albums by the Triffids (Born Sandy Devotional, 1986), Ed Kuepper (Rooms of the Magnificent, 1986; Honey Steel's Gold, 1991; This Is the Magic Mile, 2005), Skunkhour (Skunkhour, 1993), the Apartments (A Life Full of Farewells, 1995; Apart, 1997; In and Out of the Light, 2020), the Church (Magician Among the Spirits, 1996), the Whitlams (Eternal Nightcap, 1997; Torch the Moon, 2002), Silverchair (Neon Ballroom, 1999), Midnight Oil (The Real Thing, 2000) and Wendy Matthews (Beautiful View, 2001).
[26] Chris Reid of RealTime magazine wrote of his Germ Studies collaboration with Clare Cooper, an organiser of the NOWnow Festival who played the Chinese zither on the album, that "it represents an extensive investigation into the endless range of sounds that can be created by combining the venerable DX7 synthesiser and the even more venerable Chinese zither, the guzheng [...] a deep exploration of musical language".