April 24, 2015

The Helix jam is a nice dance party to start this show. This isn’t anything extraordinary, but it’s quite solid. Unfortunately, the rest of this segment (Gangster > Helix) and the following segment (Mulberry’s > Crystal Ball > Dream) are very paint-by-numbers jamming. Almost all of this is exactly what you would expect from looking at the set on paper, and there’s far too much treading of water going on for my liking. The SITA begins sounding like it’s not going to extend in any meaningful way, but this turns into a nice little jam. Allen uses the e-kick throughout, and they have kind of a “funky” dance sound for part of this that works really well. The ending jam is just okay.

The HAB jam has a beautiful Blissco theme to begin. Magner seems to be almost teasing, “I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone,” at one point, or perhaps it’s just a very similar melody. They leave this and get into darker territory. I’m normally pretty against them leaving any Blissco jams, but the resulting minor key jam is phenomenal, and has a very 1.0 feel to it, particularly the patches Magner uses. I like it a lot. Rock Candy begins with a very solid jam, which sounds like a Buddha jam a lot. This only lasts a very short time, and they switch into much more solidly major key ground. This has a very dreamy, ethereal quality for much of it, and I really like this a lot too. This is nearly Blissco once again. Beautiful. The first few minutes of Abyss have a nice groove to them, but around the end of the Abyss track, they get into some pretty generic upbeat funk stuff that I don’t really care for. Magner could never use the clav patch again and I’d be okay. I-Man’s “first jam” is a quick bridge jam, which I don’t really count. Same with “second jam.” The third jam (which is really the first “jam” here) is okay, but doesn’t stand out all that much to me. Barber plays a neat little descending riff for part of the jam, but beyond that I’m relatively non-plussed here. The “fourth” jam here has Magner playing a lead riff that is from something (I believe some Daft Punk song) over and over again, and it basically dominates this entire jam. The RLH jam is great and turns into some really nice Blissco. Barber’s phrasing in particular is very pretty. The jam out has a fairly overt I-Man ending tease/fakeout, but what comes thereafter is more pretty Blissco. Love this. The encore is pretty basic.

Highlights: Helix, Astronaut (1*), HAB**, Rock Candy*, RLH (1*, 2*)