August 20, 2016

Spectacle and Donde are both basically standard, although they include horns which I couldn’t care less about. TVM first jam turns into a spacey jam which kind of sounds like it’s headed to Catalyst at points. I don’t necessarily care about this but it’s not bad either. The first several minutes of Tempest are fairly generic four-on-the-floor jamming. Around the 8-minute mark, they shift to a new theme that has some interesting stuff going on. They do craft a pretty decent jam by the time they’re nearer to Buddha, and I’ll list this as a highlight even if I might never listen to it again. The Buddha jam begins with some really cool digital stuff, but ultimately this peters out a lot for me. The Very Funk is pretty mediocre, though eventually they wind up in basically an I-Man jam before headed back to Ladies. Meh.

The band should never cover the Beastie Boys. Just don’t. The jam is actually decent. Nothing amazing, but not bad. First RLH jam has a great little Blissco theme. Second jam is mostly mediocre the first several minutes, but as they get closer to Cyclone they develop a great 4-chord theme that is very solid. The jam out, on the other hand, is mediocre and forgettable. First Crickets jam doesn’t do much for me either. The second Crix jam gets into some pretty neat territory, especially around the 19-minute mark. The Ape jam is boring, and perfectly exemplifies why I tire of this band’s DNB jams so quickly. This is directionless and uninteresting. Highwire is standard.

Highlights: Tempest, RLH (1*, 2), Crix (2)