January 02, 2020

Pygmy starts out with the usual midtempo jam, and it’s not entirely terrible, but nothing worth relistening here. However, it eventually settles into a nice trancy jam that has sort of an Orch Theme feel. They get a great sidechain-y feel going, and I love what they have going on around the 13-minute mark through the rest of the track. At one point, it sounds like they might be headed for Cyclone territory as well. This was a nice jam. The Rock Candy jam starts out nicely enough, and at one point it feels like they might bring it down and give it a chance to breathe, but then they barrel into the ending. The rest of set 1 is not all that interesting. The Nughuffer jam, on the other hand, is exactly what I look for in a Nughuffer jam. 5-7 minutes of dark trance, followed by lunacy and controlled chaos in the peak. Solid jam, and even better peak/ending. The Crickets first jam: new jam, same story. Patient stuff, particularly from Brownstein and Allen. Magner and Barber play really nicely off of another another, and they build this fantastically. Brownstein and Allen have the wherewithal to simply get out of the way and take a step back. They’re both fantastic at doing it, and even though Magner and Barber are the “stars” of this jam, hats off to the rhythm section for allowing them to shine. This is Stockton-to-Malone stuff. Crickets second jam unfortunately doesn’t do quite as much. They never quite sync up in the same way, and this doesn’t do much for me. The “space” jam into the Tractorbeam section is quite good, and the jam out of Tractorbeam is equally good. They hit on to a great Blissco theme just prior to the Clocks transition, which is very enjoyable. Clocks and Home Again are fine.

Highlights: Pygmy, Nughuffer*, Crickets*, Tractorbeam Jam