January 01, 2016

Voices has a brief intro jam, and a short middle jam in this standalone version. While the middle jam is not terribly long, they develop an absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking theme around the 11-minute mark, led by Magner’s organ playing, with Brownstein following suit. This jam has such a melancholic feeling to it, and it feels both uplifting and depressing at the same time. It evokes joyful memories, now distant in the past. Truly hauntingly beautiful. I regret that Barber comes back in so quickly with the Voices ending riff, but for what this was, it was absolutely beautiful. This piece of brilliant music is only 90 seconds long, but it shows how and why this band can be the best band in the world, even if just for a few moments at a time.

The Mario Star Jam turns quickly into a Moshi-Fameus jam, and this is a fairly cool version. I always thought they’d make these more interesting if they started incorporating Ableton’s live looping capabilities. They’re already hooked up, why not go nuts? After Barber and Brownstein come back into the fold, they set up a very nice transition into Orch. This isn’t too far outside the box, but it’s well done. Orch itself has a pretty nice little jam as well. Features some great communication from Barber and Magner. There is a moment where I swear it sounds like they’re headed to Tempest, but they just head back in to the ending of Orch. The ending of the jam has some phenomenal melodic stuff from Magner.

Dribble starts with the entire band having some weird issues. They have a lot of trouble just starting the song. The first Dribble jam has Barber showing a lot of restraint and patience. He creates some great little licks here, and while I’m not usually big on Dribble 1st jams, this is a solid version. The 2nd jam is just okay.

Spraypaint has a very cool jam in it. Around the 6- or 7-minute mark, Magner has this cool rhythmic synth that reminds me a bit of the 09/13/09 Orch. I like most of what is going on here quite a bit.

The Floes jam gets very trancy, very fast. There’s so much going on at one point that Barber and Magner swirl into this singular mass of upper register melodic noise. This might not be for everybody, but this scratches my itch fantastically. The Lunar Pursuit jam is this sort of midtempo house jam, and I don’t feel like this really becomes anything interesting. Seems to me this was just killing time to get into Sweating Bullets. Unspoken Rhyme is fine.

This version of Waves was very boring. Barber was noodling much of the jam, and the peak was mediocre at best. Playing an 8-minute Munchkin encore is almost insulting. It’s basically an ending jam only. Insulting.

Highlights: Voices, Moshi Fameus, Orch Theme, Spraypaint, Floes

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