April 17, 2008

Dribble opens up with a forgettable five-minute intro jam. The first jam begins with its usual boredom, but they actually develop a neat little psychedelic downtempo theme here, mostly because of Magner doing some really neat stuff. The second jam turns into a very long, very boring Basis intro. Barber was so boring here and it just really felt like he was phoning this in. The Basis jam is pretty forgettable during the trance portion (again, Magner being the notable exception). However, when they switch to half-time for the Shanker switch, this gets really cool for a couple minutes. The jam out of Shanker is, ironically, marked by Magner being all over the place and directionless for a change. There is a long (7+ minute) Mr. Don intro that features Magner on the pure square wave patch, and even though this is a pretty obvious Don jam, I still really enjoyed it and it had some neat Blissco elements to it. The Don jam turns into a really solid trance jam into the Basis ending.

The Rockafella jam basically is a long Shimmy intro jam. Meh. The jam out of Shimmy is very cool. Begins as a very tom-heavy jam, with some middle-eastern phrasing and melodic work from Barber and Magner (Magner especially). This is phenomenal. From here, this transitions into a neat Magner-led trance jam with some interesting melodic choice. Barber mostly stays in the background, and they eventually drop to half-time prior to shifting back uptempo for the transition to Orch. This whole jam is absolutely great. The middle jam in Orch Theme goes nowhere. There’s a portion where it sounds like Brownstein is hinting at Tempest, but it never really comes to fruition. The second jam really doesn’t have that long to get going before they start playing Denmark Massive. This was un-noted on the setlist for a long time, but this was the debut of this song. The jam out of Denmark Massive into Don is mostly filler for a long time, but near the end of this they get into this really neat, dark jam featuring Magner on the sort of “frog” sounding patch. This turns into a really cool jam with a great vibe. Would have loved to have seen them stretch this out a bit further, but this was neat for what it was. Tunnel has a short type 1 jam, and of course the encore is jamless.

Highlights: Dribble (1*), Shanker*, Don, Shimmy**, Denmark Massive