June 07, 2008

Step Inside begins the show jamless, but is quickly followed up by an absolutely fantastic Basis intro. This is unique in that they don’t immediately get into the Phrygian jamming that so often accompanies Basis intros. Instead, Barber plays this sort of haunting two-chord arpeggio, and Magner’s dreamy synths layered atop this, couple with the sine wave leads that Magner litters throughout, craft an overall mysterious vibe. This is flat out awesome. The melodic line that Magner introduces around the three-minute mark is really beautiful in a sort of sad/creepy way. The main jam in Basis has some neat sounds from Magner, but overall there just isn’t much interesting thematically going on here. Ironically I thought this got more interesting as they got closer to Reactor, which is weird because normally this era featured painfully mediocre Reactor peaks. This one is actually pretty solid. No jam out of Reactor, just a drop into Vassillios. The jam out of Vassillios turns into an uptempo dance party. While I wanted to like this a lot, as it sort of gives off the same vibes as Step Inside, this just never really felt locked in to me.

The jam in Munchkin remains one of my favorites of all-time. This begins with Allen on the ride cymbal, and the first minute or two is the band clearly setting the foundations for something. Magner has an awesome, evolving melody that really pushes the jam forward. Barber’s play is mostly textural the first couple of minutes, and Brownstein’s bassline is minimal. At 6:37, the band does a short build and emerges from the build without the ride cymbal, and in a much more straightforward dance beat. Magner has a siren-like quality to his melodic movement here, and Barber’s almost atmospheric play continue to give everybody else space to do whatever they feel like. Brownstein seems to struggle a bit in figuring out what he wants to play, or how. Around the 8-minute mark, it feels like this jam may simply stagnate and never hit the next level beyond just generally sounding neat. At 8:40, Brownstein lands on a few choice notes that he seems to like a lot, and after playing this a few bars, he’s landed on where he wants to go. The drums drop out for a few measures, and when they come back in at 9:20, Brownstein lands on what has been called the Party Boy bassline. This is so simple, but so incredibly effective. The dance vibe here is so incredible, and this simple bassline (coupled with fantastic play from Magner and Barber) creates such a wonderful, upbeat, dance party environment. Brownstein evolves this bassline a couple times with some added frills, and this continues to get more and more fun until they hit the Munchkin peak section. Awesome stuff.

Set two features a jam out of KITNO. I’m a little torn here, because the jam itself is pretty neat, but it basically features Brownstein playing the KITNO bass (or at least teasing it) throughout most of the jam. I enjoyed this enough to note it as a highlight, but would have loved if he just came off this theme. Unfortunately, this turns out to be the theme for the set. The band teases KITNO throughout the composition of I-Man. The I-Man jam starts at 6:50, and to start has a dark, psychedelic feel to it. Barber has a great dissonant riff that he keeps playing as a response to Magner’s call. Around 9:30 they do a dropout/return where they change to a new theme. The new theme is a little bit more of a straightforward minor key jam without the dissonance. Brownstein teases the bassline to Solstice at one point. This turns into a solid dance jam, and Barber’s tone throughout is great. The Ladies jam begins with a dark sound, and almost feels like it could be headed for Abraxas for a bit. Instead, around the 13-minute mark, Allen drops the e-kick drum and this turns into a fast-paced, uptempo dance party. This turns into a great, thematic jam with some really solid chord movement. Not outside the box by any means, but really nice. Abyss has a very short jam into the beginning of Boom Shanker that just doesn’t have any time to breathe. The jam out of Boom Shanker quickly turns into an uptempo jam with a major key theme headed into I-Man. This is not bad by any means, but I just never felt like this landed where I wanted them to. Barber is really solid throughout this jam, but this seemed like such an obvious I-Man return from the start I felt like they were uninterested in doing anything all that interesting.

Highlights: Basis (Intro**), Munchkin**, KITNO, I-Man (1), Ladies