March 01, 2008

I love Step Inside. It’s such a solid opener, and doesn’t really sound like any other song they have. I wish they would have learned to do more with this song, and would have jammed it more frequently. The first several minutes of Triumph are the typical dissonant drum and bass jam which so regularly accommodates it. However, around the 10-minute mark they shift into an almost ethereal, major key jam. This coalesces into a really great theme that becomes a full-on, triumphant jam. Barber misses a few notes in the peak that are a little difficult to stomach, but other than that I really loved this. The Shelby jam begins with pretty straightforward DNB, however this evolves into an awesome, slow-burn Basis intro. Magner has a bunch of audio samples of some guy describing mushroom trips or something like that, and the overall vibe here is tripped out, psychedelic jamming that develops in such a patient way that it’s hard to overstate. This is considered one of the better Basis’s from 2.0, and with good reason. The main Basis jam has several different sections. The psychedelic section beginning around the 22-minute mark through the end of the jam is just phenomenal. This begins with a slowed down breakbeat jam, with Magner layering the psychedelia very heavily. As the band shifts back uptempo, Magner comes up with an incredible lead riff which Barber then piggybacks off of as they approach the peak. I’m not sure if this is a tease of something, or what it’s from. It feels so unbelievably familiar, but maybe it’s truly them just coming up with brilliance on the spot. Either way it’s great.

Spraypaint to begin the second set has a long, type 1 jam that goes nowhere. Astronaut begins with Barber changing the opening lyrics from, “One blink of the eye you’re someone else,” to “One pie in the eye, you’re someone else.” Clever, considering the Pi jam later on in the set. The Astronaut is jammed out of the SITA section, and this turns into a dissonant, dark, ominous jam. Magner adds in some samples here to really round out this darkly psychedelic jam, including the famous “Smoke. Smoke. Ya smokin yet?” set of samples from Family Guy. For a long time I thought this was headed back to the SITA section, especially when it turned happier sounding near the end of the jam. However, it instead goes to RLH. The first jam in RLH is the famous Pi jam. This is very cool, and what’s coolest about this is that the intervals that the band plays for the entirety of this jam are 3-1-4-1-5-9. That’s the progression they play, in addition to singing the 3-1-4-1-5-9 throughout the jam. Really unique thing for them. After playing the Pi jam for a bit, Magner drops back in the “Smoke” samples again. They vamp for a while, and it almost has the feel like they weren’t totally sure what to do once they left the Pi jam. I think if they could have maintained the momentum from the Pi section, this could have developed into a truly great jam. Instead this is a few really neat minutes followed by a lot of filler. The Barber random speaking at the end over the ambient section is…interesting. The second jam out of RLH has a lot of potential. They hit this really poignant progression around the 28-minute mark that almost feels a bit like Portal. However, this is quickly dropped and suddenly they’re just playing Spaga. The Spaga jam is disjointed, and eventually leads back to the ending of Astronaut. This is very confusing, as they never played the Suspended in the Air composition of Astronaut. This is an odd quirk and I suspect they simply forgot about it. The Morph encore is the predictable jamfunk one would expect from a Morph encore. Overall, this show is fantastic, though the real meat here is located in the first set, which is pretty damn close to perfect.

Highlights: Triumph**, Shelby**, Basis**, Astronaut (1), RLH (1*)