January 02, 2016

I was writing a long-ass review but I clicked outside of the dialog window and lost it all. I'm not inclined to write it again, so uhh:

• The horns are tasteful and a welcome addition even on Spy (which I almost always skip).
• The Blues Brothers stuff is a very obvious skippable gimmick
• Just by looking at the runtimes, you can surmise the same about the encore.
• The meat of this show (the first set C>C>C and the second set 55 minute I-Man) is incredible. Slow-building, especially the I-Man, but worth the payoff. This period of Biscuits is often more about setting a mood than blowing minds; these jams do a lot of the former but still comprehensively do the latter when so moved.
• Several of the transitions are practically sudden drops, but in a masterful way where they feel inevitable.
• Magner plays a lot more piano than expected, sounding quite a bit like Page McConnell on several occasions. It's at its most unexpected and notable coming out of Sven.
• A 10 minute Astronaut can be pleasantly compact, but a 6 minute Reactor only leaves enough time/space for Barber to go nuts.
• I'd give this one a 4.5. The fluff accounts for only a smidge of the runtime and exists only in the obvious places. Everything else here is awesome and often quite unexpected. Hell of a way to end a run.

The KOTW jam has horns in it. If that’s something you like, you might like this. I don’t care for this. It’s not just that there are horns, but the jam itself is very uninteresting. The Caterpillar jam has the same horns for a few minutes, but I think the jam is more interesting. There is a part around the 12-minute mark where Barber latches on to some minimalist phrasing, and Magner layers it with a phenomenal lead. This has kind of a mad scientist dance party feel to it, and I’m here for it.

The jam out of Confrontation has part that is absolutely beautiful. This is absolute Blissco, and has some really interesting playing. I love this. They start with a fairly subdued jam, but it turns into some wonderful upper register work from Magner with a weird, square wave synth that takes things up a notch. They build a peak and Barber absolutely crushes it. Wonderful stuff. They end this by basically dropping into the Caterpillar ending progression. This is a great ending to Caterpillar as well. The rest of the first set is throwaway.

I-Man is a 55-minute version. The first 20-minutes or so are the intro, and they basically are type 1 nearly the entire jam. I didn’t find much interesting here. The first in-song jam has some really cool qualities to it, but as is often the case, the first jam is cut short. The second jam, again, has a cool darkness to it, but is stunted before they make it interesting enough. The third jam is really cool. It begins with a riff from Barber that has been played before, multiple times. I have no clue what he’s teasing here (he plays it around the 31:23 mark). I’ve found he played it at least in the 09/12/2009 Mr. Don, but have no clue what this is. In any event, this coalesces into a nice happy jam that ironically feels like it could be headed toward Mr. Don. Magner does some cool padwork here. The jam out of I-Man into Svenghali is uninteresting to me, but I like Sven as a peak a lot.

The jam out of Svenghali is wonderful. This is more Blissco, baby! This is a lot jammier than they typically get, and honestly this could be played by a straight-up jamband and it wouldn’t be surprising. Not really electronic at all, and mostly a focus on piano and chords from Barber. However, this subdued little jam is marvelous. The Astronaut jam comes out of the SITA section, and gets into some darker territory fairly quickly. Barber has this awesome little lick that he plays over and over again here, and they really do a great job of building this patient theme. I really enjoy this jam, although I couldn’t care less about the Reactor peak they get into, which felt forced.

Frog Legs > RLH is nearly non-existent.

Highlights: Caterpillar, Confrontation, I-Man, Svenghali, Astronaut