October 30, 2015

Buddha is very solid. Nothing crazy, but a nice dance jam. Bridge and Oname Wa are standard. The first several minutes of the Confrontation jam are downright boring. Around 13:30 they venture toward major key territory, and this gets marginally better. They subsequently wind up in this weird dissonant portion of the jam that goes nowhere. The first few minutes of Don have a nice little major key jam, but this doesn’t last long, and they force a key change. They eventually wind up in a more straightforward dance jam. This is nice, although Brownstein telegraphs the Confrontation ending from about a million miles away. They drop to half-time before the switch back to Confrontation, and Magner has some awesome melodic phrasing.

Neither the first nor second TVM jam does anything for me. The first and second I-Man jams are the typical “bridge” jams, don’t last long, and don’t get outside of type 1 territory. Only the second one even really ought to count as a jam. The third jam has Magner on the angel choir patch, and Brownstein is doing a lot of slap-and-pop bass. This isn’t bad, but doesn’t move me either. Fourth jam is very solidly inside-the-box and never ventures far from I-Man ending jam for the first few minutes. Around the 20-minute mark, they hit on a minor key jam, and I swear Magner is teasing something, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. The first Boop jam is a typical fast trance jam with not much going on, but the second slowly morphs into a really nice Tricycle peak. Honestly, this is much more about the Tricycle peak than the jam which preceded it, but it’s very nice. Tricycle > RLH is pretty well-worn territory.

Highlights: Buddha, Don, Boop (2)