November 17, 2019

The thing I love about 4 song sets is you know they came to explore the space. This first set is legit. Vass into the calypso dribble is siiick. Then a smooth groovy transition to shem. Stand alone astronaut which was kinda short but still a great position right at the end.

Set 2 is where the magic happens. GiG into inverted overture is such an underrated jam imo. Then the debut of clocks which is the old rework’d “sample”. It was in its infancy but still a great tune in progress. From there we go to the TB jam. These beam jams were becoming a staple for this tour. In this part of the show shit got serious. I’m glad they stuck with these type jams Sampling some of their house/trance favs. They finish by dropping into a drawn out orch which is always hypes us up. Doesn’t travel to far after they change keys and End the set by finishing GiG.

3 song encore. They open with another stand alone station which is another new instrumental great potential. The show closes with an unfinished RC went pretty quick into the end of iman completing the version from the night before.

The opening jam out of Vassillios is fairly vanilla, but they eventually bring things down and basically start from scratch. The resulting jam has a great feel to it early on. Unfortunately, this just never goes anywhere and eventually we hit Dribble. The Dribble jam is a mid-tempo jam that really goes nowhere for 8 or 9 minutes (although has some cool sounds from Magner and Allen). The last couple minutes are actually pretty cool, (around the 14-minute mark or so), but I can’t in great conscience call this a good piece of improv when they basically did nothing for 90% of it. Near the end of the jam, they fall on to the crutch of the “Changes” jam that they play throughout 2019. Meh. This wouldn’t be so annoying if they didn’t then start the Shem-Rah jam with the exact same jam. Why?! They play Changes Jam for a minute or so, play another three minutes of an actual Shem-Rah jam (which never develops), then they play Changes Jam AGAIN before heading to Shem-Rah ending. Literally half of this first set feels like it consists mostly of Changes Jams. The SITA jam is solid enough, though stays pretty close to type 1 territory. The ending Astronaut jam is too short and too uninteresting. The GiG jam gets into some fun trancy territory, primarily led by Magner. The jam itself is pretty one-dimensional, but fun nonetheless. They speed up and head to Overture territory, and just about get stuck on a “repeater” jam, but manage to avoid it and get into Overture. The Overture jam gets into some more uninspired midtempo funk. I don’t think they change from about 120 BPM or from a B-vamp for 7 minutes here. That’s not always the worst thing in the world, but when they’re not saying anything interesting, they need to be better at recognizing when to change things up. Clocks ends and they literally break down to nothing. From the sound of it, I can’t really tell if this was accidental or intentional, but either way it works out for them. It feels like, given that they immediately go into what seems to be a Tractorbeam section, this replaced the standard “space” jam. I’m not sure what the timestamp is for the “ending” of the Tractorbeam section, and would be nice if I knew these composed portions a little better as the lines are fairly blurred. With that said, the jam out of the Tractorbeam section is phenomenal, and very Magner heavy. He has a great call-and-response melody he plays, and the band is very locked in here. I’ll be honest, I would have been fine with them continuing to develop this further before heading to Orch. They build up to a chaotic whirlwind of sound before dropping into Orch. This segue was extremely well done and should be how they always hit Orch Theme. The first Orch Theme jam doesn’t do much for me. The second Orch Theme jam doesn’t do much for me. Station is a cool tune, but this version is standard. Rock Candy starts out with some classic minimalist guitar figures from Barber, but he loses interest as it’s clearly getting close to bedtime, and he noodles around as the band heads toward I-Man. I do think they regain some momentum as they get closer to I-Man, and they finish solidly.

Highlights: Dribble, Grass is Green, Clocks*