May 24, 2008

Step Inside begins with a dance jam. This has a really nice pocket to it, even if they don’t really do a whole lot with it. The jam out of 42 begins with an airy sound, centered around a 4-chord progression from Brownstein. This is not bad, but when they switch to a darker sound, things pick up immediately. This turns into a nice Crickets peak. The jam in Crickets has kind of a spacey sound to it, with Brownstein playing some bass chords as the rest of the jam develops around him. They spend a long, long time building this. Some might call this patient, but I lost a lot of interest for several minutes. The one neat note here is that Barber plays a chord pattern strikingly similar to one he plays near the beginning of the famed 12/14/08 Vassillios jam. Maybe just neat to me. They make it all the way to the Svenghali track without anything else interesting happening. At this point, they shift to a very subdued jam, where everybody sort of resets prior to Allen making a marked shift uptempo into a DNB beat. The next several minutes are, similar to the several minutes which preceded them, forgettable. That said, as they get closer and closer to Sven, they hit a chord progression similar to the second half of Abyss, and this has a blissful, dreamlike quality to it. This portion of the jam is fantastic, but it’s essentially only a couple minutes prior to the Sven peak. Eh.

No jam out of Morph, just a drop into Resurrection. The Resurrection jam is a little meandering for a few minutes, and they seem to struggle to find their footing for a bit. They eventually slow down into a dub jam for a couple minutes, before Allen drops the kick again and they slide smoothly into a dark dance jam. As they get more uptempo, Barber has this sort of siren-songy lead that builds in intensity as they get nearer to Orch Theme. This feels oddly dubby and dancy at the same time. Then there is an abrupt stop that is clearly accidental. They do what they can to get back on track here, but this stop clearly threw them off a bit. Magner comes in with the pan flute patch, which is nearly always welcome, and they shortly thereafter drop into Orch Theme. The Orch jam is the usual dark, dance stuff. Magner quickly adds a Middle Eastern flare into this jam, and his lead work here is fantastic. This is the highlight of the night for sure, and he was clearly determined to play out here as much as he can. Really great stuff. This version of Astronaut features a short SITA jam and an unremarkable second jam. There is a neat Wizards in Winter tease near the peak of Astronaut, but that’s about all here. Caterpillar features Magner on the angel choir patch from the beginning, and while this never gets far outside of the box, I enjoyed this. Memphis begins with a “hip-hop” jam that has some dark, ominous overtones. Felt like this could get cool, but never really had a chance to develop before shifting uptempo toward the ending of Therapy.

Highlights: Step Inside, 42, Orch Theme**, Caterpillar