July 18, 2015

Astronaut has a jam out of the SITA section. After a couple minutes of the dreamy SITA theme, they venture out into a more exploratory jam, with eerie, spacey pads from Magner hovering in the upper registers. Part of this feels like it’s headed toward a Ladies jam. Around the 11-minute mark, there’s some great interplay between Magner’s evolving rhythmic lead and Barber’s guitar solo. I like this a lot. The Vassillios jam is a very solid dance jam as well. Magner’s lead here sounds almost like a saxophone, and this is one of those jams where the whole band just feels locked into a groove that might never end. I-Man’s jam begins with a pretty typical bass riff from Brownstein, but around the 6-minute mark, the band departs on a dark, dissonant jam that features Magner playing some real haunting stuff. The second I-Man jam begins with some great phrasing from Barber, and Brownstein plays this great bass-chord riff that has a great feel to it over the dance beat. This too, turns into a dark and dissonant jam around the 13-minute mark. The third I-Man jam is my favorite of the trio. They develop a wonderful little Blissco theme. This isn’t overtly “happy,” but it has such a gorgeous sound to it. It really is evocative of the Voices intro sound without relying on the Voices intro as a crutch. This is its own thing, and it’s marvelous. They develop this sidechain-y sound around the 23-minute mark that is very unique for this band, and it’s really interesting. The Voices jam has a fast DNB theme that really does nothing for me. Neither does the Pilin jam.

Sabre Dance is standard (and a weird set opener). Konkrete has a drawn out type 1 jam. Not sure who is asking for this, but okay. Crystal Ball begins with a pretty typical tom-filled jam. However, around the 9-minute mark they abruptly drop into a sidechainy trance jam. The rhythm of the bassline feels like Brownstein is wanting to play Orch Theme, as it’s nearly identical. However, this turns into a solid jam. The only caveat here is that it lasts only a couple minutes. I’ll call this a highlight, but just barely. The Abyss jam begins with a nice dance jam that features a bunch of slap bass from Brownstein. This is not done in a gratuitous way, and I generally enjoy this segment of the jam. However, they drop to a half-time jam, and what they land on just is not interesting at all. This gets more interesting as they get back into a trance groove, but not enough for me to re-listen here. No jam between Tempest and Knights of Cydonia, nor back into Tempest. As much as I like the song, Knights is a bad cover for Barber, vocally. Anybody trying to emulate Matt Bellamy is going to pale in comparison, but Barber doesn’t even try for the falsetto portions, and it makes the contrast that much more glaring. The jam here is just okay.

Third set begins with Dribble, and they have a decent build to the intro. The decency of that build is immediately destroyed when they absolutely botch the drop into the song. Jesus Christ, Barber. The Dribble jam features a lot of organ from Magner. This sounds like generic jamband stuff and I really could not care less about it. Somewhat predictably, they get much more interesting the last 2 minutes before the Spacebird transition. They bring this down to a spacey, ambient jam, and this section is pretty neat. If this were the entire jam, I’d be in love with it. The Spacebird jam is a full 15 minutes. The first several minutes are a plodding, go-nowhere theme that doesn’t really do much for me. Around the 9-minute Mark they hit on another jammy jamband sound, full with more organ from Magner. Again, not my cup of tea. Three minutes later they drop to a half-time gate, and while this ironically feels even more jambandy, I actually like this quite a bit more. The Crickets jam is almost exactly what you’d expect from a Crickets jam into Cyclone. That’s not to say this is bad, and Barber in particular is very solid in this jam. However, there’s no real character to this jam. It’s filler. On top of that, the drop into Cyclone is abrupt and feels forced. The jam out of Cyclone is not great. Barber’s tone in parts of this is just godawful. It does not fit the sound of the jam, and Magner tries to reel him in with some soaring stringy synths, but nothing doing. This felt like forever, and not in the good way. They eventually go from a trot to a jog to a sprint as they head toward the Crickets peak. This is fine. The jam out of Crickets into Home is short, but nice regardless. Not something I’d call a highlight, but the flow here was great and I’m sure live this was a blast. Last jam is forgettable as well.

Highlights: Astronaut, Vassillios, I-Man (1, 2, 3**), Crystal Ball, Spacebird