May 16, 2007

The Lunar Pursuit ~> Svenghali ~> / jam out of Cyclone into Reactor ending deserve WAY more props and attention. Even the Ladies is pretty damn good. Barber was on point and Allen is on the perfection beat. The congo beat / rasta jam from around 8 minutes into 'HAB' is really, really good...Mags and Barber are peeking and dancing around the main chords of the song for a long and fun time until the slow and sexy crescendo back into the "HAB, Corrinado flies over the sea" This one's a winner (IMO). The chills are there and you will be dancing.

Trust me, Safety Dance is not the only highlight here. A good show to start off one the best tours ever.

Lunar Pursuit makes its debut! What an awesome, awesome song. They jam it out, with a middle jam and outro jam as well. Middle jam is a breakbeat jam with some interesting arpeggiator work from Magner. Jam never fully lands for me, but a solid debut nonetheless. The jam into Sven devolves into fairly generic DNB pretty quickly, and there is a 30-45 second ambient little thing between end and beginning of Sven. The jam out of Sven begins as a boring DNB jam, then a boring half-time jam. Around the 14-minute mark, they increase tempo and suddenly we have a full-on dance jam on our hands. Neither this nor the jam out of Cyclone into Reactor do much for me, and what we’re left with is a mostly forgettable first set.

Ten Ton Foot always felt like the Biscuits doing a mediocre Umphrey’s impression. No jam here, either. Triumph has a rock jam, that eventually leads to the Ladies peak. This feels out of nowhere, and just has relatively poor execution. Ladies features a monotonous dance jam, and HAB which follows has an unenthusiastic, piano-heavy jam that ultimately leads nowhere. Pilin has another forgettable rock jam, and the rest of the set is jamless, with the exception of a minute long ambient “space” jam prior to Safety Dance.

Highlights: Safety Dance (Intro*)