March 10, 2006

Spy is standard. Caterpillar here is not bad, but the jam never gets beyond sort of marking time until they hit the I-VI progression for Caterpillar’s ending, which happens like 4 minutes before the end of the jam. It’s nice that they’re clearly starting to get more comfortable with that ending jam section as a couple of times in 2006 so far they’ve struggle to all hit the progression at the same time, but this is way, way too early. Floodlights has a nice jam that gets darker and more dissonant as they head toward the Basis intro. This effectively plays out like a long, winding, slightly-faster-than-usual Basis intro, and I’m all for that. The Basis jam is replaced by a drop segue into KOTW. Boo. KOTW develops into another dark and dissonant jam. This time, it’s a DNB jam with Magner on his “evil harmonica” patch, and Brownstein’s bassline is ominous and foreboding. This is cool, and I’m typically not a fan of their DNB jams.

Both the first and second Robots jams here are predictable and filler. You can skip entirely without missing much. The Waves jam, on the other hand, gets very interesting. After several minutes of the typical dark trance jamming, around the 18-minute mark the band shift to a more major key sound, and this has a weirdly psychedelic-Blissco feel to it. I like this a lot, and it’s a pretty unique sounding jam for at least a short while. After this short Blissco sound, Magner busts out a piano patch, which has a great contrast over the still-very-fast-paced drumbeat. The first few minutes of the Abyss jam are a pretty straightforward, but still solid, minor key trance jam. This lasts a while before they head to Basis ending, which is fine. I’ve Got a Feeling is jamless, Home Again is fine, and the encore songs are both jamless.

Highlights: Floodlights, KOTW, Waves*