September 26, 2013

The Lai opener has a drop segue into Wet. Most of the Wet jam is less than interesting. There is a lot of “soloing” from Magner here, and that just doesn’t do a whole lot for me. Minions has a long type 1 jam that isn’t awful, but I do find it frustrating when Magner insists on leaving that “Minions arp” in the background of these jams. He finally ditches this around the 14-minute mark, and the jam is almost instantly better. Imagine that. I think Magner’s melodic phrasing here is nice, and though I think Marc is getting dangerously close to a “repeater” jam, he manages to switch things up enough to keep me mostly interested. However, within a minute or two, they’re back into Minions. What a waste. The second Minions jam is dark and dissonant. I don’t get much from this either, but they’re at least getting a little more outside of the box. Therapy has a brief “solo jam” where Barber shreds plays out for a bit. Strobelights has a neat e-drum heavy jam, where Allen drops the e-kick. Magner uses a sort of 303-esque patch, and around the 10-minute mark, Barber comes up with this siren songy riff that works really well. When Allen removes the e-kick, it often feels jarring to me (as this one does). That said, the last 10 minutes or so of this jam are entirely throwaway. There is just almost nothing in this span that I find remotely interesting. All of Spacebird is the same. This is just downright boring, particularly Marc. We get it, you like octaves.

Shimmy has a 20+ minute jam. Give these guys that much road, and they’re sure to find something interesting. The first few minutes of this are solid, with some Middle Eastern jamming. After a couple of minutes of this, Magner develops this neat haunting theme on the top of the jam, and Barber’s playing has some interesting elements, incorporating note bends in some neat ways. Around the 16-minute mark, they hit a new theme, and Magner has some great melodic phrasing here. This is fun and dancy. Around the 21-minute mark, they hit a semi-repeater jam over a breakbeat pattern from Allen. This is pretty boring to me. After a few minutes, they hit another new theme, with Brownstein playing something vaguely reminiscent off the Buddha ending progression. They again ditch this fairly quickly, and they develop a major key theme as they head toward B&C. This is nice, and very pretty, even if it only lasts a few minutes. This is a major key jam, but the third measure for this four-bar progression has some great color that is much more interesting than the typical major key fare. This develops into an absolutely beautiful crescendo that is my favorite portion of the night. B&C has a nice major key jam in it, and this one is a lot more straightforward. I like this, but it’s nothing more than just very solid. The portion of music immediately following the major key section (just before they settle into the Bombs intro jam) is much more interesting, but that felt like a missed opportunity. Barber uses this tremolo effect that is unique for him that sounded like it could be really cool, but they leave quickly. The jam out of Bombs doesn’t do much for me. HDPF has two fairly typical jams, and neither does much of anything interesting.

Highlights: Strobelights, Shimmy**, B&C