July 09, 2011

A lot of Rockafellas around this time are pretty much the same. This one is awesome. Magner has some fantastic playing here, and this gets into a really cool “wall of sound” uptempo DNB jam before dropping back to half-time. Barber is the right amount of Rock God here without ruining things. Neck Romancer starts in pretty solidly type 1 territory, but they branch out quite a bit. They grow this into a really solid build. Nothing outside the box here, but well-played. After they hit the Neck Romancer “ending,” they just about immediately transition to Abyss. There’s no real jam here, which is disappointing. The jam out of Abyss starts out really nicely. Magner and Barber are playing with the same timbre for a bit, and the effect is very pleasant. The drum break around 12:20 is well-timed, and when they drop back into the house best at 13:00, it feels inevitable. This is always the great feeling during a Biscuits jam: “Of course that is what HAD to come next.” This shouldn’t be confused with predictability, and the distinction is important. The build into Confrontation is not great (thanks, Barber), but overall I thought this was a solid, if forgettable, jam. The jam out of Confrontation starts normal enough, but around the 10-minute mark, Magner leads the group to major key territory. Around 10:25 he breaks out his square wave patch to color the edges of the jam, and they develop a lovely Blissco theme. Brownstein telegraphs the transition to Air Song about two minutes too early, though they build a nice transition nonetheless. Air Song has a short-ish type 1 jam in it.

Spectacle is basically as close to standard as it can be. First Memphis jam is pretty straightforward, and a little too noodly from Barber for me. The second Memphis jam just doesn’t do it for me. I think they have some pretty good communication here, and there are parts of the jam itself that I really like. However, as a whole this section of improv just isn’t something that catches my attention in any meaningful way. The jam out of Cyclone is fast-paced and high-energy. Magner is on a mission, and his Virus comes in really handy in accomplishing whatever this mission was. As they get closer to Waves, it gets a little predictable, but the Waves peak is mostly solid. Waves begins with a dissonant jam that has some portions with quick bursts of DNB from Allen. Around the 19-minute mark they switch to a major key. I don’t find much of this jam interesting. It’s really fast, I’ll give them that. CWB and Highwire are standard.

A 10-minute On Time with a type 1 jam does not much for me. Strobelights is mostly fine, but I don’t find much here noteworthy. They vamp in the same key for most of this jam, though it sounds like for a little while they could be headed to something like Orch Theme as they get into that dark, evil sound. The peak of Shimmy is okay. The Shimmy jam gets into a great groove right away. Around the 16-minute mark, they develop a nice little progression that pushes the jam ahead with intention. This turns into a really solid Buddha peak. The Buddha is also a great jam. The first several minutes of this have a great dreamy quality to them, buoyed mostly by Magner’s playing. This feels vaguely reminiscent of one of my favorite jams, 10/26/07 HAB. It’s not nearly as good, but it’s got that feel to it. Around the 15-minute mark, Magner adds this very formant-sounding synth that fits in really nice. This turns into him using the vocoder pretty quickly. I always wonder if this is something he just decides in the moment, or if he plans, “Hey, I’ll be using the vocoder in the Buddha jam tonight,” at the beginning of shows. Regardless, this continues in a really nice two-chord progression as they head toward Gangster. The Gangster jam has a lot of cool texturing from Magner, but Barber is a little too shrill and screechy for my tastes here. Give me something to work with, Barber. Around the 9-minute mark, his tone improves dramatically, but they are basically in a jam for two minutes before they shift to the Tricycle peak. The jam is fine for those two minutes, but not enough that I’d re-listen here. Drop segue into Robots. Blah. Both Robots jams are forgettable for me.

Highlights: Rockafella*, Confrontation*, Shimmy, Buddha*