April 15, 2011

Mitts is standard. Grass is Green starts out with this weird, dissonant jam. I typically like these types of jams, but here they just can’t seem to decide what they want to do. They meander for a few full minutes, then finally land on a more cohesive jam around the 10-minute mark. I don’t necessarily think what they land on is all that memorable, but it at least gets them all on the same page. They build a decent artificial peak here, though they botch the landing into Vassillios. The Vassillios jam starts with a decent little theme from Magner and Barber. I don’t think they do much with it. They slow down to a crawl out of nowhere in order to make the transition to Minions. This felt very forced, and 100% could have been done better. They vamp the intro to Minions for a long time. I understand that they like this little theme, and they often do this, but I wish they wouldn’t. Just get into the song. The Minions jam out has some nice stuff from Magner, although I really wish he’d drop the arp throughout the jam. This jam never really develops in an interesting way until right at the end of it. Around the 14:40 mark, the band’s build (particularly Barber’s playing) is pretty solid. But again, they just sort of END the jam and start playing Voices. Jarring transition, guys. The jam out of Voices is the highlight of the first set, by an enormous margin. They hit on a VI-VII-I progression that works really well. They stretch out the progression a little bit so that the resolution occurs in bars 7 and 8 rather than in just bar 4. I think this works pretty well. It does feel a little draggy at times, but overall I like this. I wish Barber’s tone here were a little better, but Magner comes in with his square wave sound (think 04/11/2008 Vassillios) and takes this to another level.

Spaga has a pretty typically mundane jam, however, the real story here is the jam into Reactor and the peak. This is straight-up terrible. One of the worst peaks I’ve ever heard, and one of the single-worst sections of music I’ve ever heard by this band. Just absolutely terrible. This is worth a listen, just to hear how bad Barber is here. The jam out of Reactor drops to half-time almost right away, and what they do with the half-time jam is not all that interesting. Barber’s tone here remains a problem. Around the 15-minute mark, they ditch the half-time and speed up to a four-on-the-floor jam. Barber’s tone improves, and they drop into a nice groove. They build this nicely as they head into a solid Tricycle peak. This is nothing outside the box, but it’s well-done. The jam out of Tricycle has this subdued, laid back little jam that is of the kind that often precede Humu intros. I like this for what it is, but I probably wouldn’t re-listen to it. Humu’s jam turns into a really nice house jam. Again, they’re not stepping too far outside the box here, but they’re playing well and communicating well. I’ll take it. They drop immediately out of Tempest into a TVM intro jam. This is gorgeous, but it’s also only two minutes long. Flesh these out more. Please. I’ll note this as a highlight, since it is really wonderful, but also feels like a missed opportunity. The TVM first jam is really solid for a TVM 1st jam. Wouldn’t call this a highlight and it just barely escaped type 1 territory, but solid anyway. The second TVM jam quickly turns upbeat and heads to a nice four-on-the-floor jam. Around the 21-minute mark, they lock in on a nice theme which slowly transitions to a major key for the B&C ending. Again, they’re not reinventing the wheel here, but this is decent. The Magellan encore has a few minutes of really cool stuff, but other than that it’s the same Magellan you’ve heard a billion times.

Highlights: Voices*, Reactor, Humu, TVM (Intro)