October 30, 2020

set 1. Solid stand alone portal imo. However the Freebis > Rock > GIG (inv) > Candy is my fav sequence from this show. Jam was out of first part of RC was sweet. The real heat is Especially the jam out of GIG. This grows some serious legs with the theme they were pushing but then they bail on it and then brought it back hard !!

Overall some Patient building jams with some surprises from magner. Be sure to give this part a listen 🙌🔥🙌

Set 2 starts with highwire and out of it develops an old skool trance jam. Travels far into SITA then they follow thru to ending of astronaut. They keep it going tho heading towards the crix peak middle section then diverging into the end of dribble competing the unfinished version from 10/17. From there they evolve a jam that heads into PBR which is a great song they’ve consistently developed over the last decade. Set ends with a stand alone clocks which is probably my favorite part of this set. This song has really come along way with the jams they mature out of this. So many possibilities for this song In The future as well imo it never stops with these guys.

Encore is stand alone station. This is another song that they really can use as an audible anytime. Good to see it as a closer hea.

MVP is magner all day. His genius in developing some of these jams is uncanny. ☝️

Portal has a standard type 1 jam in it. This is solid, but like every other Portal type 1 ever. The Freebis jam has a pretty mundane beginning, but around the 10-minute mark they shift uptempo into a dance jam. This actually turns into a nice little jam, and has a few different themes in it. The Rock Candy jam features Barber using a lot of his new arp toy thingy, and as usual some parts are better than others. There is something that is slightly off with the sync here, and I’m not sure if whatever he’s using has latency or what. As a former producer, it’s very noticeable. At the 13-minute mark he ditches these effects for just a standard guitar tone, and things get so much tighter almost immediately. Magner uses a great gated arpeggio patch that works ridiculously well. I really like this section, even if it’s somewhat short-lived. Around the 15-minute mark, they launch into a Humu tease. Wait no, then it’s suddenly GIG. Almost like these songs are nearly identical. Hmm. The jam in GIG is phenomenal. This sounds like it’s going to be a Suspended in the Air jam, so much so that I’d count this as a tease. Regardless, it’s absolutely beautiful. This subsequently turns into what sounds like an Abyss intro jam as well. Magner has some great work in this jam, and Barber is smart enough to just sit back and watch Magner dominate. Awesome stuff.

The second set begins with a dance-heavy Highwire jam. Brownstein is in full sidechain mode, and Magner’s eerie synths color the upper registers. I think Barber is more of a distraction than anything here, but I still like the jam as a whole a lot. Around the 14-minute mark, there’s a big swelling of the entire band that leads to a drumroll and subsequent drop back in to the jam. As soon as the band re-entered, it was clear this was headed to SITA, but they disguised it in a really clever way. The Astronaut jam begins with a somewhat generic “dark” sound to it, but around the 5-minute mark they switch to a descending I-VII-VI-V progression that gives Barber some time to noodle around in a pleasing way. This is not groundbreaking, but it’s a solid jam. The jam out of Astronaut ending speeds up almost instantly. The band sounds like they’re headed to some really great Blissco, but around the 14-minute mark, Brownstein drops the second chord which tips their hand toward the Crickets peak. I’d rather they let this stretch out more, as I think they could have turned this into something wonderful. In a rare turn of events, I think Brownstein ruins the jam for me. Magner and Barber are both on point, but this just never hits the next level. I’m a little bummed out by the Crickets jam. This turns into basically a Dribble first jam almost immediately, which is usually snooze city in my book. This isn’t much different. The way they play into Dribble here is unique, but that’s about all I can say about it. The jam out of Dribble suffers from a similar fate to Crickets. Instead of playing a jam here, they basically jam on the Miracles chorus progression, and they manage to do so in and incredibly uninteresting way. The PBR jam turns into a dance jam, which is more interesting than the usual PBR jam, but this is a little too close to the song’s progression to ever get interesting enough. I like a lot of what Magner and Barber are doing here, but Brownstein is just a little too safe for my tastes. Clocks and Station are both standard.

Highlights: Freebis, Rock Candy, GIG**, Highwire*, Astronaut (1)