June 01, 2016

The opening jam is very jambandy. Not very much for me. The Floodlights jam doesn’t stand out to me very much. Magner has some great lead lines, but that’s about it. The Strobelights jam has a great retro feel to it. Magner has some soft pads and a great gated lead that he uses the first several minutes of this jam. I like this a lot, even if it’s relatively safe playing. Around the 13-minute mark, Magner does this great tone pitch shift thing that gets very weird and very cool. From here, they change into a nice major key jam that leads fluidly into Helix. The Helix jam begins with some dark and dissonant playing from everybody in the band. Magner, in particular, has some really psychedelic sounds that he layers over the top of everything. Brownstein develops a neat call-and-response bassline here that I actually think works really well, and after this dissonant section they open up into some more straightforward dance jamming. The new theme they develop begins around the 9-minute mark, and is another solid theme that works really well. The Gangster jam has a lot of slap bass from Marc, and the band winds up in a repetitive rhythm around the 13-minute mark that feels like it lags on a little long.

Mirrors has a decent jam in it. There are parts of this I felt like were headed towards something really nice, but ultimately I didn’t feel like this hit the next level for me. The same goes for the first Crickets jam. The second Crickets jam has some really interesting, haunting leads from Magner at various points. I’m not sure I love this jam, but it’s got some really unique aspects to it that I think make it worth re-listening. Near the switch to Moshi-Fameus, Allen drops a fast e-kick and this is almost at a happy hardcore speed. The theme that Magner develops at the beginning of the Moshi Fameus jam is phenomenal. Both of them are absolutely on fire here, and this is easily the highlight of the show for me. The last few minutes of this are a clear Spectacle intro jam, and this portion is absolutely beautiful. The Pilin jam and the Wet encore are both entirely forgettable.

Highlights: Strobelights*, Helix*, Crickets (2), Moshi-Fameus**