December 03, 2001

Aceetobee wastes no time getting to the main jam, hitting the middle riff by 5:30. The main jam is still short, but manages to fit in a gorgeous atmospheric theme and a stellar peak from Barber. The Aceetobee outro melts into a Spacebird intro. The first half of the Spacebird jam is an infectious, somewhat sinister Barber-led theme. It breaks down around 11:30 around Barber’s repeated riff, which carries over into the next section—a big Basis intro. The transition is awesome, as is the Basis intro. Barber remains firmly in the lead for both, but the jams never feel too “shreddy” or overdone. After an absolutely huge buildup and drop into Basis, the middle jam never really takes off. The main jam, while on the shorter side compared to some of the others from the year, is very strong. Magner utilizes his 90s synths early on before busting out the ambient waves of sound during a passage of some sludgy riffing from Barber. The key change comes before the jam had built up to its fever pitch, unfortunately (it is a short version after all) and the peak doesn’t feel as earned as in some other versions. After a standard Spy, Mulberry’s is anything but. The first jam is unremarkable, but the second jam plays around with alternating tempo and rhythm switches and shows off Barber’s screaming guitar work. It settles into a dub-adjacent jam that builds to a grunge-y peak and lands in Spacebird territory. There’s a breakdown before the peak, but it’s phenomenal stuff all the same. The Tunnel is standard.

Fiddler is standard. Kamaole Sands is pretty dull honestly, it’s mostly Barber grooves and then it slows down into Hope. The Hope jam is a standard blissful dnb vehicle, which makes the segue into the first inverted Svenghali fairly easy. Nevertheless, it’s quite enjoyable. Svenghali has a somewhat eerie dnb theme before it breaks down to just Sammy’s drums. The theme that builds from here is not always clearly headed towards Hope, and there is a demented undercurrent to it that makes for some interesting moments. Possibly the most explosive Hope ending ever. Sound 1 is possibly my favorite of the post-September versions (but it’s stiff competition—12/7, 12/28, and 12/30 all contend). The first theme is simmering, bubbling trance. It settles into a really cool groove with great Magner/Barber interplay, with Magner utilizing the rabbit hole synths to great effect. They build this groove up to a mini-crescendo around the 8-9 minute mark before breaking down and settling into a more lumbering tempo. They build up the energy until a tempo shift at 12:30 puts us in Vassilios intro territory. Vassilios has a cool, tense jam based around the Crickets funk bass line, which settles into some great atmospheric jamming that builds to an unconventional peak before reaching Sands territory. It’s surprisingly type two for such a short jam. Judy’s encore is still type one, but it’s coming along very nicely.

4/5, but only barely. The first set is the stronger, but Sound 1 > Vassilios registers along with Mulberry’s > Spacebird as must-hear, repeated listening quality.

Stray Observations: For my tastes, the first set is some of the best Barber of the year. This is the first inverted Svenghali. There are Crickets teases in Vassilios.