November 24, 2006

The Overture gimmick here to start the show is neat, but ultimately there’s no jam. First jam in the show is Pilin, which has some great stuff from Magner, but that’s about it. The segue into Ball is very cool, and only the third inversion of this song ever. Return jam back to Pilin actually turns into a pretty interesting DNB jam that I enjoyed a good amount. Nughuffer story is about a trip to Zex Sea, which I generally find pretty corny, but not as corny as Brownstein’s beatboxing, which is always a little cringe. The jam on the other hand is fantastic right out of the gate. Magner has some great effects here, and this is dark, digital trance.

The Robots jams to start the second set are both quite long, but nothing interesting to me here until near the end of the second jam. The second jam has some absolutely phenomenal drumwork from Allen throughout, but the melody players just never come up with anything engaging for me until they hit the Middle Eastern theme late in the jam. This portion is really neat, and Allen’s absolutely on fire here. The Shimmy jam is mostly filler to my ears, although there’s a portion that sounds like Brownstein is wanting to head toward Orch Theme. Obviously they hadn’t debuted this yet, so could just be a coincidence. The jam out of Ladies is very cool. This has a cool swing to it that I feel like sometimes gives some of their jams an almost nautical feel. Perhaps that’s a weird, but this is easily my favorite jam of the night. The segue into Cyclone is more like a slide in. Like at some point the band is just playing Cyclone. Kinda unusual. Last jam is nothing noteworthy, and the encore is borderline awful. Barber’s missed notes on this November Rain solo are probably the only time in 2006 where it feels like he’s just straight up phoning it in, and are a horrifying glimpse into the future which would eventually come to be.

Highlights: Crystal Ball, Nughuffer*, Robots (2), Ladies**