February 06, 2016

Watch the video and see how Barber is dancing his little heart out with pirouettes, spinneroos and summoning the ancient Brotherly Love Gods of old Lydia, a kingdom of western Asia Minor? Well, that should give you a taste of where this show is at.

Best show in the last 8 years.

The first Robots is the “funk” jam, and this is fine. I feel like many of these sound the same, and there’s nothing unusual about this one. The Robots second jam is the standard DnB jam. Incidentally, I feel like most of these sound the same, and it’s pretty rare a Robots second jam grabs me. This one does not.

Tunnel > Abyss > Sound One is really interesting looking on the setlist. How did it play out? When they finally manage to escape the Tunnel-y outro jam, they drop into a nice groove. Barber starts strumming some chords around the 11-minute mark, and this turns into a pretty unique little jam. Barber focused solely on chords for several minutes. To be honest, this doesn’t even necessarily feel like a Biscuits jam. If it weren’t for Magner wailing on his square wave patch (I think it might actually be a combed square wave for a good chunk of it), I might not even know it’s them. However, it’s undeniably catchy, and they hit a fantastic pocket. I’m sure this was very fun to be at live, but on tape this is just pretty good to me. This is probably not something I’d listen to again and again, but it’s definitely a highlight, and the theme is at least interesting. Eventually, they drop this theme and shift toward Abyss. It’s clear after about 30 seconds that they’re going to head toward the end of Abyss. The jam out of Abyss is solid from the start. This is a much more relaxed vibe, and Magner’s plucky patch with a lot of reverb fills out the upper register in a great way. This is borderline Blissco. The only downside here is I wish this lasted much longer and was fleshed out much more. Sound One has a very drawn-out intro. You almost start to think, “Oh, this was just a tease, and they’re not actually going to play it.” Then they finally go back to the song.

Suspicious Minds and Touch Me are not for me.

The jam out of Boop wastes no time at all in getting started. From the minute the band hits the highway, the pedal is pushed straight through the floor. Whatever they did in the green room at setbreak, they should do every single night. Barber and Brownstein are absolutely determined here, and they’re playing like the bus will explode if they miss a note or go below 50 MPH. Allen sounds like an absolutely monster here, and he is pounding away on his drums in a ways that is unusual for him. Magner is relying largely on arps here, but the choice of sounds and effects is brilliant. This is 100% the jam of the night. As they get closer to the Crix peak, they do a tremendous job of being patient and building out this peak in the right way. This is a great Crickets peak, and not something this band is always capable of doing.

The 1st Crickets jam is okay. I think the early portions of it have some potential, but as soon as Allen drops in with the e-kick, I think this gets a lot less interesting. Not to say this is Allen’s fault, but the rest of this just doesn’t do anything for me. However, the jam out of Crickets back into Boop is pretty nice. Barber has a few nice licks here and there, and they have a portion at the 23-minute mark or so where they get really dark and dissonant. Honestly, I thought this might be headed for Gamma Goblins or a tease or something. They eventually get locked in on a “Crazy Train” jam, which is meh, but I like the rest of it. Boop has a generic funk jam, and (surprise!) so does Story. This is literally 26 minutes or so of uninteresting music here that can be skipped completely.

HDPF jams are typically pretty predictable in 3.0 shows. While I think these are better than they typically are in this show, they’re still not standout versions, or highlights.

The first Basis jam is fine, but nothing special. The second Basis jam has a bassline I absolutely love. At the 13:50 mark, Brownstein develops a great little bassline. It has this dark sound to it that Magner plays off of really well. Barber does a good job here showing restraint and allowing Brownstein and Magner to develop this a little more fully before getting more involved. I really like where this winds up, even if they force the transition into the major section prior to the peak.

Highlights: Tunnel, Abyss, Boop**, Crickets, Basis