December 06, 2001

The B&C is woefully short, but has a brief dip into a sinister theme that, were it played a few years later, would have had me calling Orch Theme. Voices is jamless. Magellan seems like it might go somewhere interesting, but just as it’s about to depart the usual territory Barber drops the peak out of nowhere. After Magellan, the set is cut short, apparently due to Sammy’s busted kick drum.

Pygmy covers a wide array of territory, beginning as melancholy trance and moving through a syrupy dub passage before speeding back up into groove rock and settling into Floodlights. Floodlights is pretty dull. It’s a pretty standard type one guitar solo jam before it breaks down into Hope. Hope has a very atmospheric and minimal dnb jam that leads into a Barber-led blissco theme. It hints vaguely at Waves before making a somewhat sudden transition into Munchkin. Munchkin is a fast-paced minor-mode trance vehicle right out of the gate. It proceeds along a pretty straight track as it builds up to a Waves peak. The jam out of Waves has some dnb influence, and breaks down to sparse electronica before building back up to Munchkin. The Munchkin outro is a bit more interesting than most of the set. It’s a thematic, blissful dnb jam that builds up to an uncomposed peak before shifting back into Hope territory. The band plays a long encore, likely to make up for the short first set. Smoothie King is standard. Nughuffer has an extended Zex Sea story which involves Brownie beatboxing. This continues into the jam, and it’s actually pretty well done there. The jam remains in traditional Nughuffer trance for only a few minutes, and soon enters a tense groove that builds to a crushing, almost “You and I” esque peak. The jam is cool, but the segue into Vassilios is an absolute mess. The jam out of Vassilios is pretty standard.

2/5. The Munchkin > Hope is the best part of the show, and the Pygmy, Hope, and Nughuffer jams are solid too.

Stray Observations: Smoothie King is played for the first time since 5/8/01 (56 shows). Vassilios has Shem-Rah teases.