November 20, 2019

I liked what Marc was doing in the S&M jam. Really catchy bassline he has going, but it just doesn’t progress enough for me to really love it. A good start, but not something I’d listen to again and again. Munchkin has parts I really liked, and other parts that just never hooked me. Magner has some parts that I thought could be developed in really interesting ways, then they were just abandoned. The jam is a little too all over the place for me. Freebis Slinky is…fine. The Confrontation jam starts with such a catchy hook from Magner. Brownstein tries to play along and hit some chord changes, but I think it loses steam as a result, and the jam into Rocket Science is unremarkable. The jam out of Rocket Science back in does nothing for me at all. The jam out of Pygmy is weird to me. They’re clearly locked in with one another, communicating well, etc. However, I don’t find the theme they’ve got going remotely interesting. They change to a pretty obvious Abraxas intro jam abruptly, and things get slightly more interesting. The Abraxas jam is the first part of the show that I find genuinely interesting here. I’m not even sure this is necessarily “good” in the traditional sense, but they’re experimenting a little bit with form and getting intentionally weird, and in a show that I’ve otherwise found pretty vanilla thus far, that’s great. Humu, oddly enough, has a lot of the same weirdness. I love it! In fairness, this sort of weirdness is exactly what I would hope for from a pairing like Abraxas > Humu. The Tractorbeam jam is what it is. However, the jam out of the Tractorbeam jam is wonderful. They hit on some phenomenal, thematic jamming with some soaring work from Barber. Electric Slinky is such a boring composition it hurts. Basically the same thing for 7 full minutes? Can we just name this 42-2? Basis > Anthem > Basis does nothing for me beyond having a neat segue out of the “Gimme all your fuckin’ money,” segment, which is a neat little thing, if gimmicky. Highwire encore is nice to see jammed, but not something I’ll return to.

Highlights: Abraxas > Humu