January 25, 2019

Plan B is well-played and the jam is a neat little thing, but nothing too memorable here. The first Memphis jam is nothing novel. Second Memphis jam leads to a nice uplifting jam into Spacebird that I enjoyed a lot. The Spacebird jam begins with an absolutely beautiful patch and melody from Magner. Unfortunately, they abandon it and head to minor key territory pretty quickly. Missed opportunity. The rest of the jam has some decent moments littered throughout, but they can’t seem to make up their mind what they want to do. Confro was fine. I love Air Song as a composition, but it’s unusual for me to enjoy what they do out of it for some reason. This is not an exception as the slower jam they start with is nothing special. Holy fuck this Safety Dance “jam” intro is annoying. They could make this into a song called “How To Say Nothing Useful For 20 Minutes.” Did something happen to one of their instruments or something that caused a technical issue? This is terrible. The jam into Ladies is not great either, nor is Ladies itself. However, the Astronaut jam pre-Buddha is fantastic. They extend the SITA section and it turns into a really beautiful type 2 jam. Eventually they end this and they sort of slide into Buddha, though it’s not really a “peak.” The rest of the set is nothing special, but the Astronaut/Ladies peak/peak is neat. Not my cup of tea necessarily, but a cool concept and glad to see them trying something that clearly required some planning.

Highlights: Memphis, Astronaut