January 31, 2019

The opening Vassillios jam features Magner on the square wave synth, one of my favorite patches of his. It’s simple, but very effective. They slide into a midtempo “funk” jam, and it doesn’t really develop a whole lot for several minutes. Eventually they switch keys (rather abruptly), and the jam into Orch Theme is on. I think the intro jam is done well, but nothing I’d relisten to. The beginning of the jam out of Orch Theme is a head bobber. Brownstein eventually locks into a nice progression. It seems like this has potential, but it feels like everybody is playing rhythm, and they never really develop the theme as much as I’d like. The jam out of Lunar drops to half-time and gets into a nice dub jam. Really spaced out stuff, very cool. After the dub jam increases in tempo, they hop into a major key for 4 minutes or so, and have a nice, bouncy little jam that sounds like it could be headed for Grass is Green or Kamaole Sands. Instead, we wind up in Sweating Bullets, which I suppose is fine too. This doesn’t quite get into Blissco territory, but it feels like it was headed there. Shame. The B&C jam almost feels like it’s a continuation of the end of the Lunar jam. Starts out in the same major-key-bouncy territory, before speeding up for the transition to Ape. The last 4-5 minutes of the jam are basically an extended Ape jam. The jam back into B&C never really grabs me. Spy is stretched out moreso than I’m used to. However, there’s nothing here that gets too crazy. The Spectacle jam is near-non-existent before it turns into a Basis intro jam. The intro jam is nothing special here, but the Basis 2nd jam is has a really neat section in it. Brownstein gets the band locked into a fairly rudimentary 2-chord progression, but the band gets some good mileage out of it for a bit. Frankly, I think it overstays its welcome to a certain degree, but overall I like it.

Highlights: Lunar Pursuit, Basis