October 29, 2020

Opens with 7-11 unfinished into a shaggy tease then progressively makes its way to lunar. Nicely developed chill outtro jam from this. Then changes direction and matures to a decent minions. Out of this they pick up the pace into a sick build up, not traveling far into Miracles to end the four song set. Love when they play this. Miracles jam is hot here. Such a great brownie tune imo.

Set 2 opens with a WIS bust out. Hell yeah. Very basic version but that’s ok. They were saving room for this Magellan beast that included gangster helicopters and the rarity widow. Holy hell!! this is the meat right hea. Be sure to give this section a listen.

Frog legs encore. Nice n tight n short.

7-11 has Magner playing a very cheeky “It Wasn’t Me” tease, which is pretty nice. The first jam itself is pretty typical type 1 fare. The second jam begins with a driving trance jam right out of the gate. With everybody playing well, it is very hard to not bob your head along with the beat here. Lunar drops immediately into the typical dub jam. It’s crazy to think that Lunar, which used to be just a guaranteed trance onslaught, has become a launching pad for spacey dub jams. Very neat. The dub jam is alright, and Magner jumps on his pan flute patch for a bit. They wind up speeding up as they near the Minions transition, which is fine. Minions has a short type 1 jam that frankly is a time killer and not much else. The jam out of Minions is alright, but again just not really scratching any itches. The jam in Miracles is about the same.

World is Spinning is standard. Magellan has a solid first jam, but frankly this ends way too quickly. I thought Barber had some interesting stuff going on, and for once they were actually getting into an interesting Magellan jam. Sadly, they return to the composition too quickly. The second Magellan jam gets pretty interesting. I think most of this occurs once they’re already pretty clear headed toward Gangster, but I liked it regardless. The jam out of Gangster is basically exactly what I would expect from a Gangster > Helix pairing. That’s not to say that this is bad. I actually quite like it. However, this is very firmly inside the box. The Helix jam ventures into super digital territory almost immediately. Again, this is really nice, even if it’s just basic inside the box playing. This jam lasts a long, long time. I’m not sure how long exactly, but it felt like maybe forever. Parts were nice, other parts were boring. I noted this as a highlight, because it was, but honestly a lot of it still feels like Barber is still learning how to use some of his toys. As they get closer to Widow in the Rain, things get much, much more interesting. The jam from Widow into Magellan honestly sounds at certain points like the old jamtronica band Particle. This is not even really an insult in this particular instance. Not something I’ll relisten to, but I don’t hate the Biscuits playing in this style from time-to-time. Frog Legs encore is standard.

Highlights: 7-11 (2), Gangster, Helix