February 06, 2021

Overture is the usual predictable, boring DNB that this song is so apt to produce, and The Bridge is standard. I-Man has a phenomenal intro jam. This is spacey and patient. The entire band feeds off of each other in such a marvelous way that this should really be listened to a few times in order to fully appreciate. Ambient, creative, interesting. Chef’s kiss. Second jam is very solid. This is nowhere near as cool as the first, but I enjoyed it regardless. The jam out of Cyclone is forgettable. Buddha is interesting here. They jam out of the usual spot, but I’m unclear if they intentionally turn this into a dub jam or if it’s accidental and they just roll with it. Either I think is neat as it shows the band is interested in trying new things. This jam, and the ending jam of I-Man, are not all that great, but again at least they’ve tried something new.

Story has three jams in it. The first is the usual funk nonsense. The second is an attempted Blissco jam. I wanted so badly to like this, but they never grabbed on to an interesting theme. The last is the lead-in to Tricycle, which you’ve already heard before many a time. The jam out of Tricycle begins very solidly. Unfortunately, they force a key change almost immediately, which really ruins the momentum they had going. Abyss has a very long, multi-theme jam. Each section of this is very good, particularly the multi-chord progression around the 26-minute mark. This is really, really cool. They eventually drop everything down and wind up in an ambient jam, which is fantastic. The jam out of Anthem doesn’t do a whole lot for me, though I thought the Anthem/Crickets mashup was a neat idea. Crickets jam turns uptempo as they head back toward Story ending, but unfortunately they don’t wind up in much of anything interesting here.

Highlights: I-Man (Intro**, 2), Abyss**