May 20, 2007

Bullets, Highwire, and IRW to start a show. So basically a half-hour of jamless music to start the show, saving a couple short type 1 jams. Meh. The Nughuffer story is literally Brownstein saying, “Blah blah blah, Zex Sea, blippity bloop.” Very enthusiastic, obviously. The jam itself is at least some solid, dark trance. Nothing too far outside of the box, but decent, and at last – a jam. I felt like this could have been extended a bit more, and this comes dangerously close to just filler, but they manage to keep it just interesting enough to hold my attention before the ending kicks back in. Frog Legs is obviously jamless, for a forgettable first set. Not sure if they decided they were just going to phone this in to lower expectations, or what.

Basis begins the second set with the weird hypnotism feminization sample Magner uses multiple times throughout spring 2007. Why he had this on his hard drive, I have no idea. In any event, this jam actually turns into a really nice Basis intro. The band develops an aggressive and driving theme as they get closer to the drop. Floodlights has a solid jam in it as well, though the first half is far more interesting than the second half. The jam out of Solstice is mostly generic dub. However, on the soundboard recording, at 0:12 on the Confrontation track, the band drops down to this spacey section of the jam, and the chord movement from Barber and Brownstein is absolutely sublime. Magner comes in over the top with some soft synths that beautifully color the upper register. Allen's restraint here is fantastic, and honestly they could have drawn this out to a 20-minute jam and I would have been captivated the entire time. This is so breathtakingly cool, and sadly it lasts far too little time (just a couple of minutes). The jam out of Confrontation has an awesome theme as the band rides dark trance toward an inverted Above the Waves. Barber and Magner trade interesting little plays on similar riffs, and Brownstein holds down the low end. The jam out of Waves is long, dark, and trancy. I think they overuse the noise-arp a little bit here, but fortunately the last 10 minutes or so they drop that. All in all, this turned out to be a 20+ segment of improv. There were a couple different sections that I really enjoyed, and one section that I found fairly monotonous (the beginning of the Basis return track). The jam out of Reactor begins with a fairly straightforward dark trance jam. However, near the end of the Reactor track, the band drops to a half-time Blissco jam. This is pretty, even if it’s short lived.

Highlights: Basis (Intro*), Floodlights, Solstice**, Confrontation, Waves, Reactor