October 17, 2007

my absolute favorite humu. with Mags being an all-star with big funk jams to spacewaves into a fantastic Don with Himalayas in their minds, Quaker Oats in their libidos.

Bogarts is the shit! October '07 is the month the magic came back to stay, rent-free until the next off-ramp adventures of 2011 to 2013. They eventually found their way back onto the highway as we stand here today.

Barber fist pump of the night: Cyclone !!

**Strain 'o the Day" Don't Bogart that strain...my friend. [Acapulco Gold] one of the finer daytime herbs. big, strong cerebral high while in complete control and happy as one can be. work 9-5? go here now. peace.

Spy to begin the show has a couple of the sections extended, but really it’s just vamping on the existing themes. No real jam here. Humu has a 10+ minute jam into Mr. Don. This begins with Magner using the xylophone patch, as Humu often does. This develops into a really neat breakbeat jam, with some great communication from Barber and Magner. There are times that it almost sounds like they’re toying with the Air Song theme, which is really neat. Overall, I loved this jam. The jam out of Mr. Don that’s in the Mr. Don track does nothing for me. However, at the start of the Cyclone track, Allen switches to e-kick and Barber hops on MIDI keyboard. This is fine, but fortunately he jumps back on to guitar in pretty short order. The resulting jam has some really beautiful sections. I felt like they could have elaborated on this a bit more, but I enjoyed it. The same goes for the jam out of Cyclone. This has a borderline Blissco feel to it. Really solid stuff, but never quite gets to the next level.

The second set begins with an all-time version of Home Again. This begins as a pretty typical Home Again jam, but turns into a dark, ominous, and flat-out creepy jam. This is absolutely fantastic, and one of my favorite Home Again jams ever. The jam out of this into Abraxas is pretty straightforward, and essentially is just a long Abraxas intro. The jam out of Abraxas begins with Allen dropping a driving e-kick which sets the tone for this digital jam. Barber stays on guitar here, but his rhythmic playing provides great color for Magner’s darker, digital sounds. I enjoyed this, and I thought they made the transition back to major key very fluidly. There's a long-ish Flight section which gets close to a jam. This never does much for me, but if you like the Flight section you'll probably enjoy this one. The Rock Candy jam has a great groove from the very start, and Barber has some great licks here. There’s a brief first RLH jam that just doesn’t get a chance to breathe. Shame, because this had some potential. The second jam out of RLH is mostly fine, and features some great interplay between Barber and Magner. I thought they could have expanded on this more, but instead they sort of force the ending of Rock Candy. I suppose this is fine, but felt like I’d rather have heard the ending to RLH and maintain that blissful theme they were hitting on. Encore has a brief Morph jam which goes nowhere.

Highlights: Humu*, Don, Cyclone*, Home Again**, Abraxas, Rock Candy, RLH (2)