April 20, 2006

Overture jam is forgettable to start the show. The SITA jam still isn’t quite there yet, but they at least extend this a minute or so. The Astronaut jam itself turns into dance party central, and Barber has some great minimal riffs here that he builds on really patiently. Allen uses the e-kick through most of this jam, and this is a great example of him getting a little bit more comfortable putting his own “stamp” on the band early on. I could not care less about this version of Reactor. Basically sounds like one long Reactor ending jam. Meh city. The Spectacle intro jam is not bad. Nothing super out of the ordinary here, but a solid intro to a great song.

Camera B is standard. Vass > Basis is basically one long (fairly predictable Basis intro jam). I think they are a little gun shy here about just hitting the landing into Basis. The Basis jam is notable here if only for the fact that this is Magner’s first use of the Gates off Hell patch with Allen. This is dark and the jam itself is not all that memorable, but it’s a good jam to bob your head to anyway. Step Inside sort of has a jam, but it’s short and blasé. Spaga’s first jam is absolutely relentless. I’m not generally a fan of their DNB but this is really nice. There’s not really a second jam here, which is notable in and of itself. There are two smallish jams in Magellan prior to Plan B. While I don’t care about these at all, I like the idea; they’re really only lacking in execution here. The jam back into Magellan is similarly just okay.

Highlights: Astronaut**, Spaga*