May 24, 2018

The first 7-11 jam is a pretty typical type 1 jam. Nothing too novel going on here. The second jam starts out with deliberate direction from each member of the band. I enjoy most f this trance jam, though they later drop into a dub jam that I don’t think differs much from 100 other dub jams they’ve done. There is an outro jam into Home that is alright. This doesn’t really have a chance to breathe and switches to Home within 2-3 minutes. The Home jam is alright. While this has a lot of elements I like individually (e-kick, dissonant jamming), the combination here just doesn’t move the needle much. The B&C jam on the other hand is dissonant and dark in all the right ways. This is interesting and haunting. I like it a lot. My only distaste here is that they switch back to major key far too quickly for my tastes.

The first Memphis jam is short and forgettable. Second Memphis jam has a downtempo four-on-the-floor jam with lots of plucky synth from Magner. This has a really neat vibe to it that I like a lot. Kind of a mysterious sound to it, and Barber’s playing is very patient. They develop this really nice as they head into the Humu transition. They telegraph the transition more than I’d like, but it’s so pretty that it doesn’t really matter. The Humu jam features Allen on e-kick for nearly all of it. This never really gets to the next level, and before you know it they’ve hit the I Feel Love portion. The jam out of IFL begins with the same sort of thing. Feels like some water-treading without driving toward anything. On the bright side, they eventually hit something more uniform. On the downside, that something is bland and boring. I honestly couldn’t care less about this jam. The jam out of Ladies is 17 minutes long. One would think in that much improv there would be some choice sections. So how did it turn out? The first few minutes have a great bit of foundation laying. Allen’s snare drum comes in perfectly, and the band seems to be headed for something awesome. Unfortunately, the next few minutes are pretty boring. Mostly, I think Marc is the culprit here, as his bassline is just wholly uninteresting. Around the 14-minute Mark, Marc plays a very unique bassline, but I’m not in love with it. It has an almost jazzy quality to it, and feels like it’s out of time (though it is not). Meh. Around the 17-minute Mark, they resolve to a more straightforward trance jam. Magner teases Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads. The rest of the jam doesn’t get much more interesting, and suddenly you realized you’ve wasted 17 minutes on basically nothing. Damn. The Pilin jam has a pretty typical DNB jam, and certainly isn’t worth revisiting. Magellan Reprise is standard.

Highlights: 7-11 (2), B&C, Memphis (2)