January 23, 2009

KITNO begins the show with no jam. What follows is a 30-minute long Confrontation. There are a bunch of different parts of this jam. The first section of this jam begins at the 3-minute mark or so, and this is just a standard dance jam. This section lasts until about 10:30 when Brownstein switches on to the MIDI keyboard. This section is much more digital and has a lot more Magner. I especially like the sawtooth chords Magner starts playing around the 13-minute mark. That said, this really cool section only lasts for a few minutes before they’re back in more standard dance jamming around the 17-minute mark. The last 10+ minutes are fine, with the last 3-4 being an obvious lead-in to Gangster. Overall, it’s neat that they went for the big jam here, but I feel like this is a great example of quantity over quality. There’s nothing in this long, 27 minutes of improv, that really made me freak out, with the exception of the very short digital section noted above. That said, this is still cool for the novelty aspect. The Gangster jam has about two minutes of an outro that feel like they’re leading to a really triumphant build. This is essentially filler, but felt like if they’d kept building this it could lead somewhere really great, especially with Magner and Barber working together so well here. Instead, around the 8:30 mark, they pull the ripcord and clearly begin toward Abraxas. The jam out of Abraxas is solid, but nothing much more beyond that. There’s really only 3-4 minutes before they hit the beginning of the Confrontation ending.

7-11 to begin the second set has a short, type 1 “towel” jam. The second jam doesn’t do much for me, although the segment with Magner on the arpeggiator is admittedly fun. Liquid Handcuffs into Memphis only lasts 3-4 minutes here, and this is mostly a filler DNB jam until they sort of just dissolve into the Memphis intro. The Memphis first jam features the heavy use of e-drums, in the hip-hop style of this era. Brownstein begins on the MIDI keyboard, though this is short-lived. At one point, Magner plays a Meditation tease, which is neat. Overall, I felt like this is one of the weaker hip-hop Memphis jams, but I’m still a sucker for these. The second jam in Memphis is one that I have always really loved. However, there are a couple caveats here. First, there is a Barber flub around the one-minute mark in the Safety Dance track that just absolutely breaks my heart. Were it not for that flub, I probably would have listened to this jam constantly, or at least a lot more. With that said, Magner begins this jam on the organ, and they immediately change keys for the transition to Safety Dance. Marc is basically just riding the root note the entire jam, and this is basically all Barber. The little riff that he comes up with is very catchy, and fits the vibe of this jam absolutely perfectly. The two-note run that Barber adds on around the 1:30 mark is absolutely beautiful, and takes the jam to the next level for me in terms of crafting a theme. Overall, very solid jam with one disappointing moment that knocks it down a peg. The jam out of Safety Dance has a very cool sound to it, with Magner utilizing the square wave lead. This could have become a highlight, but unfortunately only lasts for a couple minutes before they drop into Story. The Story jam is a generic dance jam. Not much more to say here, other than the fact that they jam into the beginning of Ladies rather than an inverted version, which I guess is noted notable. The Ladies jam is a fairly straightforward dance jam, but still solid. They also absolutely crush the peak. The encore has a rare actual jam out of Spy, following the “forgiving as the days go by” section. This turns into a dance jam for the Story return, and while this wasn’t amazing, I noted it as a highlight just given the uniqueness of the Spy jam here.

Highlights: Confrontation*, Memphis (1, 2*), Ladies, Spy