June 09, 2008

7-11 begins with an extended first jam that gets much farther out there than they usually will go. They get away from the reggae feel and move into a haunting, dark, Magner-led jam. They sort of just pull the ripcord to drop back into the composition, but so be it. The second jam is fast-paced trance and though I enjoyed this, it does feel like this is a little too meandery at times. Floes has the somewhat typical tom-heavy, tribal-sounding jam. Barber has some great floating riffs that bounce off of the walls while Magner’s play here is a little more subdued. Again, this feels a little directionless, but I still enjoyed it. Both the jam out of and back into Caterpillar feel a little phoned in. Neither is bad necessarily, but nothing special here.

The Spacebird jam begins with a pretty paint by numbers sound, but as they get closer to Abraxas they hit on some neat, darker themes. Again, this is nothing groundbreaking, but still solid. The jam out of Abraxas into Bazaar Escape is e-drum heavy, and features a bunch of effects from Magner. However, this somehow is still incredibly uninteresting. The Memphis jam doesn’t feature any e-drums in this particular version, a relative rarity for the time period. They still have the same hip-hop vibe here, with some cool ascending melodic riffs from Magner littered throughout. This didn’t quite reel me in, but I didn’t hate it, either. The jam out of Denmark Massive into Spacebird is straightforward, and both jams in the encore are “rocky” jams without anything all that interesting happening.

Highlights: 7-11 (1, 2), Floes, Spacebird