Spraypaint begins with a jam that is completely forgettable. This is solidly type 1 for the entirety of it. Robots first jam has a rare-for-2007 Blissco jam, and this is marvelous. Barber in particular has some great stuff here. This eventually turns into a darker, dissonant jam that feels like it could be headed for Basis before shifting uptempo into Orch Theme. The first jam in Orch Theme begins with a jam that is basically just riffing on the Orch Theme themes (heh), but around the 11-minute mark they switch into something else. This winds up with an almost ethereal, spacey sound that I really like a lot. Barber’s guitar riffs here are these plucky little things that kind of bounce around in the mix. Love it. The second “jam” here is basically a minute of playing the outro riff before dropping into Pygmy. Not sure this is even counted as a jam, really. It’s not. The jam out of Pygmy is meandering and aimless. The I-Man ending jam begins the same way, but this weirdly evolves into dark, lumbering jam that feels ominous and haunting. This is straight up evil in a great way. Crazy how quickly this went from run-of-the-mill I-Man peaceful ending jam to the haunting it becomes.

For quite a while, Memphis first jams developed the reputation as being e-drum fests. This seems to be the genesis of that reputation. This jam is loaded with Allen absolutely crushing it, and he uses a great array of effects, sounds, and becomes something of a focal point. I’m not sure if this was a deliberate discussion from the band, but if you enjoy the famous 06/13/08 Memphis first jam, you’ll want to check this out. Very neat stuff. The second jam goes in nearly the opposite direction. From the start, the band develops this blissful, gorgeous theme, centered around a stellar riff from Barber. This develops into a full-blown Blissco jam, and is wonderful for totally different reasons than the jam which preceded it. Marvelous. The second Robots jam is a DNB jam that has a bunch of neat stuff from Allen, but nothing much more than that. Magner has a couple moments where he hits on a neat melody or two, but Barber and Magner just don’t feel like they’re on the same page here until they get to the ending progression. The Caterpillar jam is solid. They come out of the gate with an arpeggiated patch from Magner and some minimalist guitar forms from Barber. This develops into a sort of DNB jam near the end before the switch to Shem-Rah. Parts of this little DNB section are good as well, but mostly this jam is just average. There’s nothing bad here, but nothing that’s going to make you come back to this again. Shem-Rah’s jam has SUCH a missed opportunity. At the 8:50 mark, the band develops this laid back theme which features some great work from Barber and a complementary, interesting riff from Magner. This feels like it could have coalesced into a full-blown glorious Blissco jam if they allowed it to happen. Instead, they depart this for something darker. The result sounds a tiny bit like the famous 04/19/2008 B&C composed(?) jam for a minute or two. However, they just can’t seem to pick a theme, and within a couple minutes more they’re on to this evil marching band sound. They really lay this on thick, and while I get what they’re going for here (similar to the first set I-Man in many ways) this theme just doesn’t land for me. Then after a couple minutes of this they again switch themes toward the Caterpillar ending. This is just a little too ADHD for me and wish they would settle down a bit. In fairness to the band, the resulting Caterpillar ending is, itself, phenomenal. They develop a unique theme (particularly Magner) as they head toward Caterpillar peak. I tend to not note peaks only as highlights unless they’re accompanied by some sort of non-peak related jam, but this should absolutely not be slept on. The B&C jam is almost entirely forgettable, with the exception of an Orch Theme tease just before the drop into Sound One. The Sound One jam back into B&C is again just too short to be all that interesting. The Fiddler encore is fantastic. The band fleshes out the jam more than usual, and Barber absolutely destroys everything here. This is more of a “rock” jam than an electronic jam, but it’s in the conversation for best Fiddlers ever. I typically hate this type of “bluesy” jam, but Barber here is impossible to deny. Ending the show with I Wanna Be Sedated is absolutely moronic, but whatever. The rest of the show is ridiculously good. Don’t sleep on this.

Highlights: Robots (1**), Orch (1), I-Man*, Memphis (1**, 2**), Fiddler**

October 24, 2007

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