April 10, 2001

The Floodlights opener begins with a mellow groove jam. After the 7 minute mark, the jam shifts to trance and takes on a decidedly more melancholy atmosphere. The mood returns to a more uplifting territory after barely a minute, and the jam takes on the qualities of an I-Man intro. After a breakdown, the jam picks up tempo and enters into a weird passage beginning around 10:45. This builds up to a triumphant crescendo, sounding at first like a possible Basis ending, but eventually settling into the ending of I-Man. The I-Man is a weird one. It is notated as inverted (and I would agree with that notation), but there is a lengthy outro jam into the beginning of the song (or a lengthy intro jam after the ending). The jam is pretty type one but interesting in that it is the only jam between an inversion that I know of. After the relatively lengthy introutro, the middle jam in I-Man is almost rushed. The jam out of I-Man is a mellow journey, retaining the characteristics of an I-Man jam somewhat but never building in intensity. It crests a mellow wave around 20:30 and then breaks down into a Crater intro. Crater is standard. Unspoken Rhyme (the last for many years) starts off in a completely different territory than typical. It’s slower and the groove is steadier, almost dubby for most of it. The theme in the middle of the jam is fantastic, and absolutely hypnotic. The breakdown to Magellan is very steady and not forced at all. Magellan itself is mostly standard, but Barber hits a great riff right at the end.

Floes begins as a standard rock jam, but Sammy quickly incorporates a playful breakbeat rhythm and gives new life to the section. The return to Floes is smooth and organic. Interesting false start in Munchkin: Magner seems to start Shelby Rose over the Munchkin beat, but the band quickly recovers. Munchkin begins with those heavy, plunking kinda synths that Magner seems to favor in Munchkin jams recently. The jam progresses along mostly Munchkin themes, until a breakdown yields a more subdued dnb jam around 8 minutes in. The jam resolves into more of a standard groove, but everything else about it gets weird as hell. There is a mellow breakdown before a smooth segue into Shelby. Shelby is a pretty standard version, with an uplifting dnb jam and a short breakdown before the buildup to the peak. Shelby drops somewhat clumsily into an outro jam, which resolves into a strong Munchkin ending theme. The pre-rework Robots still does very little for me. Confrontation is a pretty standard version with some symphonic synthwork. Ape is played dub style for the first time since spring 99, which is kinda cool, but otherwise there isn’t much notable about this version.

3/5. First set is pushing 4 territory, but the second drags it down a bit. Rhyme > Magellan is my easy highlight, followed by Floodlights > I-Man and Munchkin > Shelby.

Stray Observations: This is the first ever inverted I-Man. This was the final Unspoken Rhyme until 1/1/16, a gap of 862 shows. Amusing banter alert after Munchkin. There is…a lot going on there.