December 13, 2019

The opening “jam” into the intro of SRB is nothing remarkable. However the Shem-Rah jam itself starts fantastic. Barber hits a pocket groove that fits so perfectly, and Magner and he have some really nice interplay. Allen also has some great drumwork here, and Marc does a great job of building the chord progression around the rest of the band. DTTB seems to use the “Shem-Rah” scripted jam, which is actually just Rocket Science. Why? Do they just love this progression, or what? It’s a waste of a slot. Just. Jam. The Freebis is fine. Caterpillar > Hero > Caterpillar never develops enough to be anything notable, but the Caterpillar ending is really well-played and a bit of a unique spin on the usual ending jam. The middle Dribble jam has parts I really like. However, I think that the arpeggiator that Barber is using is a little out of place. While this is highly digital and something I’d normally love, this just isn’t doing it for me as it sounds like he just grabbed the first ARP preset he found and ran with it. Sticks out like a sore thumb to me for this reason and it’s hard to not focus on. The jam out of Dribble, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Multi-thematic, lots of layers, and so much interesting stuff going on. I really liked Crickets a lot as well. The peak is done (mostly) well, but the first and second jams are both very solid. This is what I want from a Crix. The “space” jam comes after a brief dub jam, and then they play their usual Tractorbeam set, which is fine. The jam out of Tractorbeam into Munchkin doesn’t get nearly enough time to develop. The jam in Munchkin is a love/hate jam for me, as in I loved and hated different parts of it. Magner had some interesting leads here, but I don'

Highlights: SRB*, Dribble (1), Crickets (1, 2)