Notes From The Drop Zone - 2/6/21

The show got off to an unassuming start. Two short standalones, Overture and The Bridge, warm things up. After the Bridge, the band launched into a fantastic, without-a-net exploratory jam. My gut was telling me Basis, but after 6-7 minutes the jam gradually approached I-Man territory. In all, one of the strongest I-Man intros in years. The first jam in I-Man featured a mellow trance theme with Magner on celestial synth effects. After a few minutes, Allen kicked up the tempo significantly for what was immediately recognizable as a Cyclone intro. The band built up to Cyclone over a couple of minutes, allowing Barber to deliver a massive peak. The jam was thrilling at points and sloppy at others. After Cyclone the band locked into another strong, high energy theme. The tempo settled down somewhat after a few minutes, but remained steady. Magner, in particular, was nailing the thematic jamming. The band moved from a more triumphant mood to introspective as the jam approached a middle only Buddha. The Buddha was fraught with compositional errors, technical difficulties, what have you, but out of this confusion emerged possibly the best jam of the set. The band launched into a dub theme, based around the lingering Buddha riff. Magner was, once again, the king in this jam, and he delivered strong themes moving from synth to regular piano and back to synth. All excellent. The jam returned to I-Man without loss of steam. The “main” jam in I-Man was kind of boring, but that’s to be expected.

The second set opened with Story, and the jam began and proceeded as Story jams typically do. It was light on electronic elements, which admittedly isn’t my thing, although this one had plenty of redeeming qualities. Barber was on point, for one thing, and the jam moved through a variety of themes, including one that had me thinking B&C (and had many others thinking Naeba) before a quick key change to Tricycle. The jam out of Tricycle was absolutely disgusting, and immediately made up for the lack of electronic elements in the Story jam. The jam began with a heavy, distorted trance synth theme from Magner, who was unrelenting the entire way through. The theme pretty quickly revealed its direction toward Abyss, but I can’t fault the band for that—especially since we got our first non-inverted Abyss since before the Setbreak is Over tour began in 2019! The jam out of Abyss was spectacular, locked in immediately and covered a variety of themes. The first five or so minutes sounded to me like a potential journey into Crystal Ball middle, but the band moved away from this theme and explored a jam that sounded at moments like Buddha, or Orch, or maybe Bombs. The band moved from idea to idea effortlessly without lost steam. After a solid 20 minutes of improv the jam broke down into Dead-esque space. After the briefest of explorations, the jam was rebuilt with rapidity, and immediately launched into the high-intensity Anthem. Anthem (which I believe was unfinished, unless it has been reworked) settled into a dubby theme that was reminiscent of a Crickets intro before launching into a steady trance theme. Barber and Magner achieved fantastic interplay here, crafting mellow themes that played well off one another. The jam built up in intensity, sounding like a slightly more mournful build to Crickets. The build to the Crickets peak was one of the strongest in years to my ears. In most instances, it seems like the band just switches to playing Crickets suddenly, but here it felt steady and logical. Barber mashed up the Anthem “reprise” with the Crickets peak, which is a very cool idea in theory but less so in execution. The funk jam was mostly staid and mellow, and resulted in a strong jam back into Story.

Overall, an excellent show, vastly improved over the previous night (which of course I was fond of as well). The second set stood out to me as the clear highlight, but the first was strong as well.

Highlights:

Abyss > Anthem

I need to listen to this about 9 more times before I can even hope to do it justice. Excellent thematic jamming, moving from one idea to the next with smooth precision, and eventually breaking down into experimental ambient jamming.

Anthem > Crickets

Crickets often disappoints me as a heavy-hitter. It seems like the band will abort whatever jam they’re in to switch to a Crickets peak. Not so here. The jam builds smoothly and organically out of Anthem and into Crickets

Buddha > I-Man

The composition errors resulted in an unconventionally dub-heavy jam out of Buddha. It worked well here, and resulted in a strong segue into I-Man.

I-Man intro

One of the strongest of these in a very long time. Cool space jamming in the beginning and purposeful, guitar heavy rock into I-Man.

Tricycle > Abyss

Not particularly exploratory, perhaps, but oh so nasty.