April 22, 2016

Expectations on a single-set festival set are typically pretty low. Memphis is a solid opener. The first jam, as expected, is pretty straightforward. The second jam starts out with some spacey, downtempo jamming. Magner has some great patches that he uses here, and Barber comes up with a nice little lick. Around the 15-minute mark, they pick up the pace and this turns into a nice four-on-the-floor jam. Barber has a simple-but-effective lick, and Magner starts messing around with a pretty simple saw wave patch that is used mostly for texturing to start.

Confrontation has nearly 11 minutes of solid trance jamming here. This is perfect festival material. Again, they’re not pushing any envelopes, but this is very solid, very well-played. They develop a few distinct sections before heading toward RLH. The drop into RLH feels a little botched as the band can’t seem to decide when to hit the song itself.

RLH’s first jam is fairly short and is just okay. It sounds for about 30 seconds like they’re headed toward the ending of Shimmy, but then they veer back and head into the second section of RLH. The second jam has a single portion I really like. Around the 11-minute mark, Magner plays this vibraphone patch that works so, so well. Unfortunately, they ditch this pretty quickly and what they move to is generic and uninteresting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any more interesting as they head toward Cyclone. Similarly, most of the jam out of Cyclone is forgettable as well. Fiddler is fine.

Highlights: Memphis, Confrontation