December 06, 2014

The first few minutes of Spraypaint are the typical Spraypaint solo section, and they vamp this for quite a while. However, afterward, around the 8-minute mark, the band departs and ventures toward more exploratory improvisation. This eventually gets toward some darker territory, and feels like it could get really great. However, they pull the ripcord and just head toward the Tricycle peak, which is pretty disappointing. The jam out of Tricycle takes a very forced change of key around 8:30. Most of the time, they’re a little more subtle. This would have been less subtle if Marc yelled out, “Change keys now!” The resulting jam has flashes of brilliance, particularly around the 13:30 mark. Magner has a great lead here. He’s using a simple saw wave, messing with the cutoff and resonance, and he eventually layers this lead. Frankly, without this hook, I wouldn’t have cared much about this jam, but it really tied things together. The Reactor jam is an absolute cacophony of sound. Barber’s guitar is just screaming throughout this whole jam. I don’t think this is necessarily bad, either. If you’re not into this sort of jam, you’re going to hate it, but his play is actually pretty great here, to my ears. There’s a nice little ambient-ish jam at the beginning of Jigsaw. Jigsaw’s jam is forgettable.

Confrontation has a very brief intro jam. Wouldn’t even really count this as a jam, to be honest. Magner begins the Confrontation jam with a Life During Wartime tease. The Confrontation jam is not bad, but it doesn’t feel all that interesting, either. Basis intro is same story, different jam. Just nothing memorable here (not to mention the “drop” is very forced). The “second” Basis jam comes from the middle section, and turns into a decent dance jam. I don’t think this lasts long enough to really warrant re-listening, but it’s not awful. In fact, the majority of the second set suffers this same fate. Not bad; not good.

Highlight: Tricycle, Reactor