July 08, 2011

Vassillios has a really nice trance jam out of it. They lock into a great groove almost immediately, and they build a great artificial peak prior to dropping into Rock Candy. The jam out of Rock Candy is more of the same, although I think this is shorter than I’d like. I probably wouldn’t revisit this just based on the fact that it’s not quite interesting enough, and not quite long enough to be not quite interesting enough. That said, they lock in right away, and for a bit it sounds like they’re headed for Cyclone. The only thing I don’t like here is the drop into Lunar Pursuit. They start playing a nice progression, I-II-IV-V, in a major key. However, they abandon this unexpectedly and just start playing Pursuit. Weird. The jam out of Lunar is a dub jam that Barber kinda noodles all over. This could have been better if he was a little more atmospheric with his play, but it’s really just him noodling along with the band. Meh. I remember this being absolutely adored at the time, and I’m not moved by it. Story has a nice uptempo four-on-the-floor jam out of it. They again lock into a really nice groove, and even though I don’t think this is mindblowing, it’s cohesive and has some interesting parts. This Basis jam is done out of the middle section, and involves a lot of Brownstein slap bass. I’m not a non-fan of his slapping, but they always seem to have a big problem developing jams that revolve around that style of bass. This jam is no different, and this one doesn’t lead anywhere all that interesting. I have to say, the jam out of Catalyst gets pretty weird here. They take it very dissonant around the 9-minute mark. Unfortunately, they ditch this dissonance for a more straightforward breakbeat jam after about a minute. What a shame, this could have been horrifying. On the other hand, the Basis 2nd jam is great. They get dark here and this is freight train with no brakes. Barber’s phrasing here is really solid, and he does a really nice job of playing around with his delay effect.

They jam out of Astronaut from the SITA section. The SITA vamp is actually pretty neat on its own, but the jam that occurs afterward is very good. Allen uses a lot of e-drum effects here, and they turn this into a sort of dark-and-dirty trance jam. While I liked a lot parts of the first set, this is a noticeable step up from the first set. The I-Man is one of the “faster” variety. The typical break between chorus 1 and verse 2 where they have a short type 1 jam is not present here, which frankly I’m fine with. They DO do the short type 1 between chorus 2 and verse 3. This is not a terrible jam, but again, I could do without these 2-minute jams. Starting around the 6-minute mark, they launch into this relentless trance jam. This is fast as hell, and doesn’t really revolve around a theme so much as it is a “feel” jam. This is not going to be on any “best of all-time” lists, but it’s impossible not to bob your head back and forth like Brownstein on stage while listening to this. The Ladies segue is solid, and the resulting jam out of Ladies begins with a pretty nice section. The first few minutes feature very nice, restrained playing from Barber, along with a nice patient theme from Magner to round out the high-end. Around the 7-minute mark they slow the tempo pretty dramatically, and while I think they’re able to maintain a good amount of the momentum, they teeter on the brink between interesting and generic. Unfortunately, I think by the 9-minute mark, when they play with a major key theme for a short time, they get shoved on to the generic side of the fence. Shortly thereafter, this becomes a pretty clear Bombs intro jam. The jam out of Bombs is not interesting to me. With that said, it’s at least cohesive, and the band is very clearly connecting with one another. I’ll take well-played and uninteresting over just uninteresting. This is a shame because Bombs > Ladies looks delicious on paper, but this just doesn’t do much for me. The jam out of Ladies is somewhat monotonous, and I’m not sure if they couldn’t figure out what they wanted to do with this or what, but it feels like they get sort of stuck for a while. Around the 10-minute mark, they seem to decide, and they move with intention toward I-Man’s ending. There’s not enough time left to develop this, and frankly I think this second set suffers from trying to do too much. They drop right out of I-Man into the SITA jam. Too much. The last Astronaut jam only has about 5 minutes to stretch its legs. Magner is messing around with his vocoder, and this is neat for the novelty. However, I’m not sure that it’s much beyond that.

Highlights: Vassillios, Basis (2*), Astronaut (1*), I-Man (1)