Phish 2/21/03

 

As we enter the middle of the Winter Tour ’03, we’re arriving into truly unknown territory for me. I’ve never heard any of the shows from this one through 2/25, and that’s exciting! Coming off the last show the band and audience must’ve been pretty exhausted, and the 6ish hour drive to get to Cincinnati from Rosemont may not have helped. Whether these factors will come into play during this show, we’ll see!

 

Set One

Well, you can certainly tell that the band is carrying on the high energy “we’re coming for ya!” energy of the last show with the opening salvo of this one! We get a somewhat predictable placement of Wilson as show opener, but I don’t say that as a bad thing. Mike seems to really be on a mission to get his bass in the foreground this show, turning up his volume and using a bit of overdrive/distortion to give him a stronger tone especially during the first part of set one. After a quick > we immediately head into Frankenstein. For whatever reason my Phish listening habits the past year or so has seen me avoid Phish’s cover of this song, so when this started I was like “oh yeah, that’s right, they do play this, huh?” During Wilson and this song, the band is going absolutely nuts with loops and noise during the break portions of the songs.

There’s about a minute or so pause until Mike starts playing the Down With Disease intro, though it’s not the usual kind he does, more like he’s scraping his pick up and down the fretboard before turning on the usual windy effect. At 1:10 when Trey sings the first set of lyrics, I swear he half-burps during it. This DwD jam starts off in the usual upbeat type I mold, with Trey soloing a bit and then stepping back to let the others play, and then soloing again some more himself. Around 7:00 we start to crest the hill. Trey drops out entirely to play with some loops that never seem to arrive as Mike and Fishman keep the groove going. Page on keyboards now; Trey patiently rhythmically comping in the background. Around 8:30 the band seem to be in a holding pattern, as though no one can think of a way forward. At 10:25 Page gets on the clav as Trey continues to hold back and noodle around in the background. This is one of those rare jams where my attention wanders to Fishman more often than not because not much else is happening. 13:00, Trey keeps threatening to do full 2.0 shoegazer guitar but it mostly results in a loop and some noodley pitch shifter playing. Eventually it seems like Trey realizes this jam isn’t going much of anywhere and tries to bring things back into high energy rocking focus by coming back to life and soloing. Page and Trey both do their best to make this ending high energy and fun but it’s hard for me not to feel like this DwD was a non-starter that reminds me of some of the lesser ’99 jams that mostly stay in the same style for minutes at a time. Anyway, they bring the song to a close so it’s one of those weird/rare DwD’s that is not left unfinished and doesn’t either segue into or out of another song. Very strange.

Lifeboy follows, a quite strong version indeed, with a long guitar solo from Trey—there’s a reason this is a nine minute version! There’s a sort of half-assed > segue into Boogie On Reggae Woman that Mike starts up seemingly out of nowhere. As you might expect, Mike dominates this version from the jump, to the point they even do a stop/start Mike bass solo towards the end. This may not be a lengthy jammed out version but don’t sleep on it, it’s one of those times Mike is basically leading the band and he kills it. As the song peters out you wonder if we’re heading for a segue, but no. There’s a full second or two pause before Trey starts up Run Like An Antelope. I will say that I think this is the best Antelope of 2.0 so far, though it’s somewhat because of Mike and Page pushing Trey to go to a higher peak that he seems to want to. Antelope is sadly one of those songs I agree was universally stronger during 1.0, there’s just an intense precision that Trey needs for the peak that he can’t seem to nail most of the time post-2000. Keyword is Spliff. After this, you would assume the set was over. Instead, we get a well done, albeit oddly placed, I Didn’t Know. I don’t mind vacuum solo songs or Fishman antics, I simply wish this wasn’t a set closer. Just leaves a weird energy in the air. Reverse the order of this and Antelope, this set flows much better.

 

 

Set Two/Encore

Woo, Mike’s Song to start a second set is usually a good sign! Jam starts out in the typical way, with Mike pounding out the bassline while Trey and Page trade riffs. I’ve been on record as saying that, while I appreciate Mike’s Groove and would dig seeing it live, it always feels underwhelming as a segment for jamming. When was the last big type II Mike’s Song or Weekapaug Groove? I always see it on setlists and I’m like “oooh nice” but then I get through it and it’s almost immediately forgotten. This Mike’s Song at least has some excellent playing from Trey around the 7:30 mark. By 10:00, Trey’s tone has gotten swampier and more distorted though not quite to full shoegazer mode. Trey eventually retreats but the typical Mike’s Song jam continues without him. He starts piling on loops towards the end, because if you can’t think of anything interesting to play, just fall back on unearned walls of sound! See, when people say they don’t like 2.0 Oxy jams, this Mike’s Song is the kind of thing they mean. It’s just the band throwing out a bunch of random sounds and textures without much thought or care or interaction with the other members. Fishman seems to want to give up the ghost and stops playing for awhile while Trey’s guitar has a feedback sounding loop going.

Setlists give a -> full segue into Free but this is bullshit. Only Trey’s loop was going and it ends as soon as he starts playing the Free intro, so this is a solid > style segue only. Anyway! The Last Free, from 2/15/03, really surprised me with how commanding Mike was during the jam. Around 4:40 Page starts playing some weird techno sound on a synth or something I’ve not heard before. Mike is still leading the jam like last time, though Page is making a case for letting him do it! Around 5:30 Trey and Page play rhythmic comping and the jam gets even funkier still. Around this point in the jam I was starting to get the feeling we might be taking this Free out for a rare type II spin, but alas, no. That said, it’s almost a tossup for me between this and the 2/15 version. This song is probably never going to become a jam monster but it’s often a pocket of some hot playing with Trey stepping back more often than not. I again deny a segue here, to these ears I don’t even hear a > between this and Waste. It’s interesting if you go and look on Phish.net the times this song was played, starting off very common during 1996/1997 and as the years go on, making less and less frequent appearances. This Waste is really well done, leading me to fear this is going to continue to be one of those weird shows where the ballads are played with more energy and imagination than the jam songs! Page delivers an ace, classy as fuck piano solo in this version; Trey follows with his own solo, albeit the triumphant bliss jam kind of solo.

After the song ends we enter into a minute and a half or so of between-song ambience into 2001 including Trey quoting Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring with Page eventually following along. This intro as a result is drawn out but not in the expected space funk way we’ve become accustomed to. Around 1:20 on the official LivePhish version you can hear Trey talking to someone on stage, with some possible yelling from an audience member or one of the band yelling just outside of the mic’s full ability to pick it up. This 2001 intro is noodley and unfocused, as though the band are giving each other ample time to try out whatever they want to do. Trey treats us to some lightly distorted, chunky comping before Page drops the organ melody and Trey instantly starts the main riff. Around 5:30 Trey is playing some dissonant feedback sound off and on but quickly stops. Mike and Page take this one over; around 6:08 even more stage banter that the mics are barely picking up, sounds like maybe Fishman and Trey? I don’t really know how better to explain it, this 2001 is simply all over the place in a frustrating way. If you had this on in the background you’d still enjoy it, sure, but as a jam to listen intently to, it’s too many ideas that are introduced and dropped quickly. 8:35ish we get a half-hearted attempt at a Stash quote from Trey, who soon gives up and brings this odd duck of a 2001 back around for another run through of the main riff.

Ironically I might give them a -> for this segue into Harry Hood, because I didn’t see it coming and it sounded somewhat fluid to me. Trey is very noodley in this Hood intro, but will this version be as bizarre and type II leaning as the 2/15 one? Well, Trey sure loves playing with his loops and this intro is bordering on a normal 2001 for how they take their time jamming around before the proper main riff/chorus comes in. Those who wish Hood had some variance would do well to seek out Winter Tour ’03 Hoods, apparently! We’re in full on Weird Hood territory again, folks. Well, at least in this intro part. Once the normal Hood kicks back in, we get a well done but standard bliss jam Hood buildup ending. Until about 13:00, that is, when the bottom drops out and we start to build back up again. Not sure if Trey was trying to see if Mike and Page would go in a different direction or what. Anyway, Hood ends and we’re into a quiet, uncommitted ambient jam that peters out completely. You can faintly hear Trey(?) call out for All Of These Dreams, and that’s what we get. While I love this song, this is already the third I’ve heard in 2.0 and so could’ve done with a different ballad. Trey is really straining to sing this time out, it sounds, well, bad. Again, the solos from Page and Trey are excellent and well considered, but that’s not the kind of playing I fell in love with Phish over, y’know?

Sensing, perhaps, that this second set wasn’t turning out any big jams or otherwise interesting moments, they kick into Possum as a late second set pick-me-up. What can you say about Possum other than it’s a consistent high energy showcase for all of the band’s chops? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a truly great Possum because I’ve never heard one that struck me as half-baked or average! It’ll always remind me of my first show, and how even though it was the final song of the encore, people dug deep and were dancing their asses off all over the place. Much like the first set, you’d assume Possum was the set closer, but instead we get a > into Cavern. Another song that always delivers but rarely is anything special. Trey’s vocals sound strained and tired, and he drags behind the beat a couple times. Almost feels like Page steps in to help him through, too. Big fuckoff ending with tons of loops and sounds and noises; where was this kind of stuff during the jams, boys? We get a Wading In The Velvet Sea encore, which isn’t the worst choice for an encore but as the ONLY encore song is really leaves the show off on an energy level that is the opposite of how it started. As most of this show was high energy but lacking deep jams, I’d have preferred they saved Cavern for coming after Wading.

 

 

Overall

Looking back over my notes for this show, and what I wrote above, I almost feel like I’m simultaneously being too easy and too hard on this show. Set one has good playing throughout but the only real jam, outside of a mostly good but standard Antelope, was Down With Disease, which I thought was listless and never found a direction to go in that produced anything memorable. Set two would go on to be a real letdown in my book. Other than a directionless, standard Mike’s Song jam and a reappearance of Weird Hood, where’s the improvisation? You might look at this show’s setlist and think I must be crazy, but I think regardless of the high energy playing in the first set, consistently great soloing during the ballads, and another excellent Free in the second set, there’s literally nothing about this show that excites me to listen to it again. It’s the sort of show I’m sure people had a great time with in-person, but if they bothered to listen back to it at home with more objective ears, I don’t think anyone could credibly argue any song from this show is even a top 30 version.

2/21/03 is the first time that I haven’t added one song to my 2.0 highlights playlist, and while that doesn’t mean it’s a 1 out of 5 automatically as a result, it’s without a doubt the weakest show I’ve gotten to thus far. I can’t in good faith proceed in this retrospective review series if I don’t give this one a 2 out of 5.

 

[Highlights]

Set One: High energy playing throughout

Set Two/Encore: Free, Weird Hood reappears

Phish 2/20/03

 

Another day off, another change of city, and we’re in Rosemont, Illinois. As we enter the halfway point of this tour, it’s clear that the band, while not as spit-polish clean in the composed sections, has finally found their footing in terms of jamming. We still have most of the 2.0 juggernauts to go but this show, even more than any before, has the deepest jams I’ve seen in this project to date. Yet…do deep jams always equal great jams? Let’s find out. Sorry, that was low energy.       LET’S find OUT!

 

Set One

Rift > Rock and Roll to get us off to a high energy rocking start! A shame Rift has Oxy Trey in full effect, though, with some sloppy joe playing that leads him to redeem himself with the solo and with his performance during Rock and Roll. I’ve gotta be honest, this cover is ok but it’s not one I would’ve picked for them to keep in the rotation after the Loaded Halloween set. Now that I’m not an alcoholic sadboi Loaded is actually my favorite Velvet Underground album, though I’d have pinned ‘Train Round The Bend’ or ‘Lonesome Cowboy Bill’ as the Phishiest feeling to keep in rotation. But I digress. This Rock and Roll has valiant efforts from Mike and Page to keep up but Trey is determined to steal the show, pulling out his usual bag of Machine Gun Trey tricks. Not saying they aren’t effective…simply that if you’re looking for the jam chart Rock and Roll’s, this ain’t it, chief. “It was alright”, indeed.

Guyute is…look, you read what I said the last time. I’ll just add here that I’ve never seen a Guyute get segued into or out of; it’s a lead weight that brings a set to a crashing halt each time, for good or ill. Driver is a fun not quite ballad, the lyrics give me a They Might Be Giants feeling, maybe that’s just me? Waves. Ok, now we’re starting to open up the jam jar. Out of the crop of new songs off Round Room, this and Seven Below had the most obvious jam potential to my newbie Phish ears back when I started listening in earnest in late 2003/early 2004. Anyway, this version is shorter than the debut from 2/15/03 but I actually like this one more. Page and Mike, as they have been this whole tour, are playing their asses off, and the times during jams tonight when Trey lets go of the reins lead to some incredible jamming. Anyhow! This Waves doesn’t deviate from the studio version but has the energy and interplay that can only come from a live version; hell they should’ve waited a year and put out Round Room Live on the anniversary of Round Room’s release date with all live versions. But I digress. As would become standard, Waves is brought back around and finished up with another run through the chorus, and then some eerie/calm vocal refrains over some spacey ambience that will either lead into a jam or a segue into another song. This one doesn’t leave us hanging too long as Trey emerges from the interstellar muck with the Simple riff.

Now, OK, I think someone screwed up the lyrics at one point. But this Simple has to go down as an all timer. And by that I mean, version of the song and as a jam in general. While it has those dark/spacey Trey-trying-to-replicate-My-Bloody-Valentine moments we associate with 2.0 type II jams, it also feels a bit like some of the best 3.0/4.0 style jams that move between different sections and styles almost as if the band is composing a multi-part song in real time. I will never forget hearing/seeing the 10/11/23 Ruby Waves aka Dayton Ruby Waves in person, and at some point wondering if they had segued into another song I didn’t know. But I digress yet again! This Simple, though starting off like most modern non-jammed Simple’s with a slowing down/quieting down mellow jam, starts to hint at its true attentions around 6:45 when Fishman starts up a new drum groove and Page and Mike keep pulling Trey further and further away from ending the jam. By 8:00 it’s clear we’re in for it, lifting up to the heavens on a beautiful, soaring jam that reminds me of a less serene, more melodic version of the Flatbed Jam from The Clifford Ball. 9:15 finds Trey using his pitch shifter to play in the upper register as he’s wont to do during spacey jams. Page gets nasty on the clavinet around 9:40 while Mike and Fishman boom and rumble in the background. Trey has all but disappeared into loop territory by now as Page can’t decide between piano or clav. Lovely little melody from Trey around 11:20 that’ll get stuck in your head. Mike starts using his super reverb bass domination effects pedal around 11:50; Page jumps on a synth and does droning, rising sounds. We’re in full on space jam territory now boys, almost as deep as 6/14/00. Right as I say this, Trey-trying-to-replicate-My-Bloody-Valentine starts up in full effect. At first the rest of the band doesn’t know quite what to make of it, so Mike doubles down on his bass effect and gets reverb sucked into the vortex being made by Trey and Page. I fear for the people in person who were tripping when this switched from a pleasant ‘99/’00 ambient jam into a hellacious shoegaze portal. By 14:24 Trey has returned to the pitch shifted loops but it’s all being swallowed up in a maelstrom of sound, texture, and noise that can only be described accurately as psychedelic as all fuck. I can see how hearing this in person, with imperfect acoustics, could just sound like a mess of incoherent noise, like some contemporary reviews were saying. That said…listen to this fucking thing! The last two minutes alone is more interesting than the best of the jams during the NYE run, shades of the 4/2/98 Twist and the 9/29/99 2001.

After that space/time matter/anti-matter explosion, you’d be forgiven for assuming they were going to give us a short Gotta Jibboo; maybe 10ish minutes total, bit of a jam, get in get out, that kind of thing. But nope, whatever was powering Phish tonight had only had its first of many fission flashes. I know a lot of 1.0 fans prefer the old ‘99/’00 Jibboo’s which mostly kept the same funky groove and had Trey loops and Mike pounding it out front and center for 8 to 15 minutes, and while this one is largely following those blueprints for a couple minutes it eventually turns into more of a rocking Trey led masterclass in type I Hose. Think the 6/14/00 Back On The Train in terms of everyone locking into a groove and responding to each other and playing their asses off, but making it sound effortless. Was it Bruce Lee who said, “be like water”? Anyway, around 7:40 Trey starts playing a super high energy, uplifting guitar melody that reminds me of the 7/6/98 Ghost, and round 9:30 it’s reminiscent of the post-Suzy Greenberg jam on 9/14/00. At this point Machine Gun Trey takes over and absolutely scorches Rosemont to ashes; you can barely hear Mike and Fishman trying to keep the groove going so Trey doesn’t fly off into the stratosphere.

At 12:00 Page starts trying to take over on piano, and Trey responds by stepping down a bit and playing more raw guitar tones in lower registers. Page jumps on the funky, funky clav for some fun wailing as Trey keeps a lockstep groove bubbling with Mike and Fishman. Thanks to Page we get increasingly funky albeit with a Hendrix-ian distorted, raw texture instead of typical ’97 wah-wah action. By 15:00 Page is back on piano and Mike tries to bring us back to the Jibboo bassline and melody as Trey resists and croaks out guttural guitar lines. So by this point in set one we’ve gotten a full space/ambient jam, a dark/evil 2.0 jam, a kick ass Trey-led Hose jam, and a funky grooving jam, what else can they do? Jibboo just keeps going and going…until it doesn’t. Perhaps sensing they need to save something for set two, Trey eventually gets back on the Jibboo bus and we bring the song to a normal ending, albeit a huge peaking one and a triumphant capper to an astounding 38ish minutes of music (counting Simple, duh) to end the first set.

 

Set Two/Encore

As if to leave no doubt the kind of mood they were in tonight, Phish open the second set with a dependable workhouse: Tweezer. While the general pace of the composed section is classic late 90s, they waste no time in establishing that we’re in 2.0 now with the ranges this jam goes. (No, it’s not as good as the forthcoming one, shut up, we’ll get there!) Trey is busy fucking with his pitch shifter loops so Page and Mike pounce on the jam around 5:35. Other than some faint loops, Trey must be adjusting something because he doesn’t play anything until 6:00ish. Around 8:00 Page is on the clav and organ in turn, while Trey is steering them further into a somewhat standard type I Tweezer jam like you might hear in 1996…until just after 9:00 when Trey starts to add some extra grit to his tone. Mike goes deep to get just below him. Page is on what almost sounds like a Fender Rhodes around the 10:30 mark but I think it’s just a keyboard/synth. Soon Trey starts to do these patient, spaced-out-by-a-few-seconds single note growl/moan sounds. This section stagnates with not too much development as Page tries out some different textures indecisively. It’s during some of these 2.0 jams where I can’t tell if Trey is just in his own world or he wants to just play in the background with guitar noises. Mike and Fishman try to add some momentum and by 15:00 we’re finally hitting on something interesting, with Trey making these weird slide guitar-ish sounds as Page follows him into the tornado. Still not finding their purchase, they gear up into a rocking jam that Trey takes center stage for. We get a fun and well done yet standard big rock Tweezer reprise feeling ending (but not Tweezer Reprise feeling) that feels to me like it should’ve been in the first set’s Rock and Roll to give that more meat but eh, whaddya gunna do? After a final run through of the Tweezer riff they do a slow down, slowly falling apart sounding ending which I vaguely remember being how early Tweezers ended.

Out of the feedback of the Tweezer ending, we > plop into Punch You In The Eye. Huh, another strange setlist placement on this tour. Anyway, it’s PYITE! It rules. Next! I’ll give them a quick, half-earned > segue into Fast Enough For You, which is the perfect cool off placement after the god damn jam gauntlet they just threw down between the end of the first set and now. Good vocals tonight, great Trey solo—but isn’t it always? I call malarkey on the notion there’s a > into Seven Below, they definitely fully end the song and then Trey takes half a measure or so to start the riff. Sorry, not having it. Right out of the gate during the jam, Mike and Page jump out front as Trey muddles around in the background. Page again can’t seem to decide between piano or the clav. Around 4:45 I feel like the tempo has increased and Trey is coming to life as well. Man, pay attention to Page around 5:30, dude starts fucking killing it on piano. That’s really one thing I notice more often in these 2.0 shows, the other band members seem to really assert themselves a lot more. Page on the clav soon with Mike wandering all over the place in the background, half melod/ half whirling dervish. Around 7:30 it almost sounds like everybody but Fishman is soloing at the same time yet somehow playing together too, it’s crazy. Page throws organ darts across the room around 8:15 and goes back to piano. We continue our way into what feels like a super high energy Bathtub Gin jam, and Page going absolutely apeshit on piano sure aids this feeling. Trey drops back to some funky rhythmic comping around 10:55 as Fishman brings the Seven Below drum beat back around. Mike seems to be splitting the difference between the original bassline and just jamming.

Before we’re know it, we’re in a funky jam that reminds me of the segue between Piper and Gotta Jibboo from 6/19/04. (Oh, we’ll get there!) Well, I have to say, I certainly wasn’t expecting a 2.0 spin on a type III aka porno-funk/cow-funk jam, but here we are! There’s a huge building crowd cheer around the 13:00 mark, I assume either a new cool lighting effect or the crowd settling into how insane this show has continued to be. By 13:42 we’re so far into blissful Hose funk jam territory I’m amazed more people don’t talk about this jam! It’s up there with the aforementioned 7/6/98 Ghost for “you have to hear it to truly get it.” We just keep grooving along on the Rosemont funk express. Actual Trey ’97 style wah-wah at 15:00! Man, not that the 2/16/03 version was remotely bad, but this version sets such a ridiculously high bar I’ll be curious to see if future versions top it. I can’t imagine what a dance party it must’ve been; by the 16:00 mark of this jam I would’ve been exhausted.  We’ve slowly entered into a more abstract, spacey jam by 17:15. Mike’s got his super reverb bass effect going for a while. Fishman is kicking up some fun new grooves in the background and Mike responds in kind around 17:50 as we head into proper fucking space funk territory. 18:45 stop start jamming for a few bars and then a building spacey jam that resolves itself like a cloud passing back into the sunshine and you blink and you’re back in Seven Below and they close it off. If I were in person by this point of the show I’d probably be beyond words and just grinning ear to ear and dancing.

Pebbles and Marbles follows after a minute’s brief respite. OK, now they’re just trying to kill us! I’m almost praying for it to turn into a super mellow ambient jam instead of the set ending rampager it usually is. Trey seems to be enjoying playing really loud and noisy around the 6:50 mark, nearly drowning out Mike and Page entirely. Page again switches between clav and piano as if he can’t decide what to do. Meanwhile Trey himself can’t decide between actually jamming or just holding sustained noisy sounds. Around 9:40 it sounds kind of like what I assume O Sees playing this song would have their jam sound like. Trey’s attempts to reproduce Loveless on his own give this jam a very claustrophobic, grindy, noisy quality you’re either going to dig or hate. Mike is very active starting around 11:25 as if he, Page, and Fishman are trying to push the jam somewhere further. Trey keeps dropping what sounds like crashing stars or meteors from the sky for a few seconds before he snaps out of it and goes back to shoegaze guitar. In fact, yeah, call this the Rosemont Shoegazer Pebbles and Marbles, it’s intense as any other dark, deep type II 2.0 jam. Right around 13:50, through the wall of noise I can hear Trey starting to play the main melody and the band soon gets back into step with him as the walls of sound dissipate.

You know the part in Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace does the bump of cocaine in the bathroom of the 50s diner and she pops up into frame and mutters “god damn, I said shit, god damn!” or something like that? That’s how I feel after this set. There can’t have been anything left of the crowd after this jam, just a simmering pile of goo.

Encore is 3 songs, fuck yeah! Golgi Apparatus, always welcome, and I don’t think Trey really flubbed up once. Eh but after these sets I wouldn’t count the flubs in this encore anyway! A pretty, well played but shortish Anything But Me soon gives way into, what else, Tweezer Reprise! (There’s no > between them like setlists say, nope, not even close) Sheesh, how was anyone left alive, audience, band, or crew, after this show? Mike’s bass bomb during the opening of this had to have destroyed someone’s pacemaker and caused another person to be cured of arthritis. Huge big noise ending with tons of loops and effects and insanity at the end. I think I just developed and then was cured of arthritis listening to that.

 

Overall

Looking at the setlist for this show, you might think it’s a pretty average one for the era. But there are fully five songs with long, intense jams to the point that Tweezer, motherfucking Tweezer, is not in the running for the top two jams of the show. What this show lacks in excellent fluid segues and rarities/covers it delivers in the jamming. For 2.0 this show is an embarrassment of riches the likes of which we hadn’t seen in 2.0 thus far.

I’m really switching back and forth between giving this show a 5 or a S out of 5. The sticking point for me is that this show lacks some ingredient to truly make me comfortable giving it the highest tier. If the Tweezer had been an A instead of a B, if the first set hadn’t come to a flow/pacing halt with Guyute and Driver,  if there had been some rarity or new cover, if the playing/lyrics during the composed sections had had less mistakes, if there had been some other X factor to contribute to the total score, I’d give it a S and not look back. As a show for beings who only love Phish for the deep jams, type II or otherwise, this show is an easy S for ya’ll. For everyone else…It’s with a heavy heart (well, not really, I don’t this stuff that seriously) I have to be somewhat objective and say it’s a 5 out of 5. I will say I think it’s a bit better than 2/16/03, for what that’s worth!

 

[Highlights]

Set One: Waves > SIMPLE, GOTTA JIBBOO

Set Two/Encore: Tweezer, SEVEN BELOW, Shoegazer Pebbles and Marbles, 3 song encore including a dynamite Tweezer Reprise

Phish 2/18/03

After three shows that gradually pushed the pedal to the floor, Phish had a day off to travel and recuperate. Other than perhaps 3/1, it seems like this show gets lost in the shuffle of Winter Tour ’03 discussions, so I’ll be curious to see if it’s not that good of a show or if it just suffers by comparison. Taking a look at the setlist you’d sure be forgiven if you thought this was an early to mid 90s show for the first set. Ten songs and no segues to be found! On a personal note, this Denver show took place on my birthday, though this won’t skew my opinion in either direction since back in 2003 I was only beginning to give Phish a second try.

 

Set One

Hard to be mad at a Runaway Jim opener, even as common as it is. It’s always been interesting to me how much it varies over the years, sometimes a jam vehicle, sometimes not. This one is a normal one. Similarly, Twist has only a short jam. At a certain point in this set it feels like they’re just playing random songs. Like, why is The Squirming Coil the fourth song of set one? Odd placement to be sure. As I said in the intro, this set feels like a throwback to the early to mid 90s. There aren’t really any big jams until Walls Of The Cave but everything is played with very high energy and all four members are really giving it the gusto. It’s always great to hear The Wedge, and both Stash and Birds Of A Feather have decent jams, but they’re only that: decent. Walls Of The Cave ends the set and has some type II jamming but nothing that quite sticks with you afterwards. In general this first set is well played and has a lot of variety, but it’s also the kind of set that has no effective flow or pacing. I know some fans don’t mind sets like this, and I’m not trying to hold this set to too high of a standard, since everything is played well. It’s just not the kind of set that sticks with me or gives me anything to add to my list of excellent 2.0 jams.

 

Set Two/Encore

I kind of remember from listening to ’98 through ’00 shows that The Moma Dance never really became the big jam vehicle people were predicting at the time. It feels like such an obvious song to be the big jam vehicle of the funky era of Phish but by 2000 it was mostly just leading to high energy rocking type I jams. So while I may not be 100% correct, I believe this might be the first type II laced Moma, indicating that Winter Tour ’03 would continue to have jams in unexpected places. This Moma is really a lot of fun, from a Dave’s Energy Guide tease to the very Dark Phish 2.0 feel when it goes full type II. I’ll give the -> segue to them though it’s a bit sloppily executed. Limb By Limb follows and while it doesn’t go full type II in my opinion, it does get a bit more experimental and dark-shaded compared to typical versions. I have this lingering feeling like Trey is cutting off the jams before they get really deep this set. This and the forthcoming Carini are good reasons why. After a loose Thunderhead, we’re treated to a somewhat rare set II appearance from Divided Sky. Nothing much to report with this one, it’s well played and gets high energy just like a lot of set I was. Carini, as previously stated, starts to go into full on 2.0 jamming but there’s a moment toward the end where Trey seems to be waiting for a new direction and when it doesn’t come he just starts awkwardly playing the main riff to bring the rest of the band back in line and end the song.

It’s no contest to say the set ending You Enjoy Myself is the best version of 2.0 yet, as well as the true highlight of the second set, and by extension the show as a whole. It features some excellent high energy jam segments where Trey hangs way back and lets Mike and Page take the reins, and when he finally does come in he just wails and makes an already strong YEM even better. Machine Gun Trey had his hands all over this show. The vocal jam is all over the place like usual until someone starts doing something vaguely similar to the “ah-weem ah way” vocals from The Lion Sleeps Tonight and next thing you know they’re just doing a cover of it. It’s obviously one of those unrehearsed covers they occasionally stumble into, so the lyrics/arrangement may not be totally correct. They seem to suddenly realize they don’t know how the song ends and it’s one of those vocal jams that peters out yet abruptly at the same time. Anyway, encore time! We get one of only two encore appearances of NICU (the other is 7/15/22), and this song will never not sound weird to me when it starts on its own and isn’t segued into. Am I crazy? Certain songs just never sound right when started from a full stop; see also Weekapaug Groove and Makisupa Policeman. But I digress. Definitely a loopy encore with Mexican Cousin bringing the show to a close, but hey, at least it’s not another underwhelming one song encore.

 

 

Overall

Taken as a whole, this show is well played start to finish. In fact it might be the tightest show yet in terms of the execution; Trey must’ve really been practicing on the day off between 2/16 and this show. Looking at the first set, it’s fun and has a ton of variety, but it doesn’t go very deep and it has really inelegant flow/pacing. Set two is the jammier set so you’d think it would automatically be better, so, can I shock you? I think they’re both pretty equal. The jams there may go deeper and venture into type II territory though this is one of those exceptions to the rule where the setlist and song runtimes tell the story: it just never gets that deep. It’s almost like a tease, and like I said above, it’s like Trey gets impatient and pulls the plug on the jams. YEM -> Lion Sleeps Tonight is an excellent capper, and the encore is just ok with an uber rare NICU placement.

So there’s a lot of positive and neutralish stuff I’ve said about this show and my feelings towards it as a whole are similarly muddled. Had I attended this show I would’ve really loved the experience; it’s a fun and varied setlist, and there’s a lot of mid 90s-esque high energy playing from everyone, especially in set one and the YEM. However, I think this show is textbook 3 out of 5.

In my preamble to this review series I wrote: “A 3 can be a Phish show you attended and have a lot of fondness for but can admit wasn’t one of the best ever/on that tour/that year.[it] can be a show that has at least two highlights, or at least no real lulls/downsides, but doesn’t make a lasting impression otherwise.” And I think that description is perfect for 2/18/03. This is the only show so far where I had to really debate about adding any jams to my ongoing 2.0 best playlist, and in the end it was just the YEM. I think that says a lot.

 

[Highlights]

Set One: Everything is well played and high energy but there’s no obvious highlights.

Set Two/Encore: The Moma Dance -> Limb By Limb, You Enjoy Myself -> The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Phish 2/16/03

 

OK I’m going to start this with a spoiler because I can’t contain myself anymore! After an excellent first night in Vegas, Phish would deliver, hands down, the best show they had played in the 2.0 era to this point. 2/16/03 may not be as well-known as 2/28/03 but I could actually see someone enjoying this show more, depending on a few different factors. This is also one of those rare shows where the setlist kind of does tell the tale, with some exceptions we’ll soon get to!

 

Set One

Hearing a bunch of loops and Fishman on the ride cymbal, so is it Maze? No, holy shit! What else can you say to a David Bowie opener?! It was the first in nearly a decade, it seems, but what makes this even more special is the Catapult sandwiched in the middle. Trey is not doing his best during the composed parts, at one point seeming to stop playing altogether and try to get back on the horse, as it were. This Bowie jam, thank god, is one for the ages, with interesting staccato jamming sort of like the beginning of some Stash jams, a Manteca quote around 8:40 from Trey, a non-riproaring Trey mostly playing abstract repetitive lines and letting Page and Mike lead for awhile, a fun Catapult appearance, and a strong ending. This Bowie -> Catapult -> Bowie segment would set the scene for the rest of the show. After a dependable Horn (no segue) and a fun Guyute (still one of my least favorite composed songs but it’s growing on me), Round Room starts up.

It's no hyperbole to say this Round Room jam is one of my favorite jams ever. Ever! It’s just such an insanely unique and interesting jam, with Fishman starting us off on woodblocks and the jam becoming bouncy and rhythmic. Trey mostly hangs back and plays textural stuff as the jam gets more energetic and abstract/dark, with an excellent ending that feels like a storm cloud passing overhead and away into the distant horizon. Sublime! As a bit of a chaser to that magnificent cocktail we get super rarity Golden Lady, played here for only the second time to date. To be honest I’m a very selective Stevie Wonder fan though I will say this one is pretty great and a good fit for Phish, so I wonder why it isn’t played more. Boogie On Reggae Woman is better, ok sure. Anyway. Setlist yet again shows a > where there clearly is none. Poor Heart is up next. It’s fun, almost feels like it’s playing the part of a short high energy song to set up the set ending song. Where I wish there was a > there isn’t one, though. Ah well. Pebbles and Marbles closes out a stellar set one.

 

Set Two

The opening of set two is sure something! “He’s gunna fuck it up! Fishman doesn’t know this song!” Oh Trey, you who live in the glassiest of glass houses, maybe don’t cast stones? Anyway, another rager of an open to set two, with a fucking killer Down With Disease -> Seven Below -> Down With Disease sandwich, complete with one of those rare non-unfinished Disease’s. Enjoyable but standard DwD jam, starts to get spacey before Fishman drops the Seven Below drum beat and Trey picks up on it immediately as the rest of the band slowly gets on board and we hit a near-perfect -> into Seven Below. Despite forming the meat of this sandwich the Seven Below jam doesn’t go super deep before we head back to Down With Disease. Well -> back into DwD I should say. After a big loop ending to DwD we > gently into Anything But Me. This is one of my favorite Phish ballads, so happy to hear it! Especially since my understanding is they don’t play a lot of Round Room album songs because it brings up bad memories for Trey. After a good but not great version we get a minute or so of ambience before Piper starts up. This Piper, often dubbed the Viper (for Vegas Piper, get it?!), is a monster type II beast (not necessarily in a spacey/experimental way though) and is one of the best versions ever. 2.0 really was a great time for this song, as next year we’ll get to the phenomenal SPAC version. But I digress, back to 2003! You simply have to hear this one to get a full grasp but at one point toward the end they start playing the DwD ending/riff but in the musical key of Piper, it’s nutso. Around 19:05 it sounds like Trey is starting up Rift for a few seconds, maybe just a tease? Fishman plays the Seven Below drumbeat as the jam just keeps going. Soon, before you know it, we’re -> to Makisupa Policeman. Keyword was ssssssssssssSpliff. Fairly high energy Makisupa too, some excellent solos from Mike and Page. Trey keeps emphasizing the word “house” in this version for whatever reason.

I’m still not happy hearing so many Character Zero’s on this project so close together. This is actually a pretty good version with a decent solo from Trey, though I do wish if they’re going to close a set with this song they either jam it out a bit or segue into something else to be the proper capper. Anyway, the mood deflates with Friday. Ugh, another single song encore, and a Friday encore to boot. Unlike 1/4/03 version, which had killer soloing from Trey, this one just lands like a wet hunk of sod. Page tries his best but it’s just a meh ending to an otherwise killer show.

 

Overall

Well, 2/16/03 is easily a 5 out of 5. It has some of everything that’s great about this band: insane jamming, fluid and fun segues, a rarity (and a cover to boot!), excellent set pacing, etc. My only complaint is the show ends on a bit of a downturn, as neither Character Zero nor a single song Friday encore are acceptable in my opinion.

On a bit of a side note: 2/16/03 is useful as the kind of show that exemplifies the difference between a 5 out of 5 and my top tier S out of 5. It’s just not quite there in the pantheon of the all timer shows, but it’s still a truly exceptional show and is the best of 2.0 thus far.

 

[Highlights]

Set One: Bowie -> Catapult -> Bowie, ROUND ROOM

Set Two/Encore: DwD -> Seven Below -> DwD, PIPER -> Makisupa

Gong Splat- Gong Splat

 

Despite finally releasing a new studio album in 2022 after an almost two year gap filled with live albums, a remix album, and various improv sideprojects, this year turned out to be a relatively quiet one for Osees. Outside of extensive touring and somewhat under-the-radar releases of a couple live performances by the improv sideprojects, there simply wasn't a lot to discuss this year. We keep expecting a surprise EP or something, as previous years have been capped off with, to no avail. Maybe this means 2023 will be bursting at the seams? Maybe we'll finally get the badly needed Singles Collection Volume 4? Regardless, the year has also turned out to be a bit of a wash as far as my life is concerned. This time last year, as I started to listen to Gong Splat and had recently begun a new job, things were looking up and the next year felt full of promise. Instead I'm ending 2022 in a real rut, unemployed and rudderless, with the same amount of debt as I started with...though I am more frequently sober than I have been in years, which is something! Anyway, my apologies that it's taken way longer to finish this run of reviews than I had anticipated.

Gong Splat was released on December 17th, 2021, the last in the slate of improv sideprojects “recorded in the peak of dope smoke lock down” according to John Dwyer. While this one doesn't stray too far from the rest in terms of overall sound, it's quite unique in the line-up, which is stripped down and for once doesn't include Tomas Dolas:

John Dwyer- guitars, etc.

Ryan Sawyer- drums

Greg Coates- bass

Wilder Zoby- synths/Mellotron (on tracks 2, 4, & 9 only)

Andres Renteria- misc. percussion (on tracks 1, 3, & 5 only)

From this you may have noticed that a full third of the songs only feature the trio of Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates, while Zoby and Renteria never appear on a track together. Speaking of Zoby, he's the wildcard here as we haven't heard him on an improv record yet. Gazing at his discography reveals he's worked with El-P and Run The Jewels as well as production work and various appearances with bands I won't even pretend I've heard of (Chin Chin, Lanoiraude) and some I have heard of but haven't listened to (Cass McCombs, Blockhead). At least on Gong Splat his style of playing tends toward the abstract/atmospheric and is used as a background rather than a foreground element. To put it another way, I'd describe him primarily as a synthesizer player and not a traditional keyboardist.

Given its smaller pool of musicians, I would definitely put Gong Splat more on the Witch Egg side of the equation than the Bent Arcana/Moon-Drenched side. Which is to say it's more jazzy, spacious, and atmospheric, though lacking saxophones and a traditional keyboardist/pianist. Ryan Sawyer on drums means it certainly has more of a krautrock and groove-oriented vibe as well. With less cooks in the kitchen, Gong Splat showcases more of a small-group interplay that allows ideas to happen and develop with more immediate focus in a more rapid fashion. It's quite telling that the three tracks that only feature Dwyer, Sawyer, and Coates are the shortest on the album, and among the shortest in the entire improv sideproject run. Judging from the plays on Spotify, I get the sense most people start off strong on Gong Splat and their enthusiasm kind of wanes as it goes. I can understand that. This album doesn't do anything terribly surprising and different than the records that had come before, so despite the fact it's probably some people's favorite in the run and has some excellent material, some fatigue has no doubt set in among fans.

With the bookend of Gong Splat it was now easy to differentiate these releases as if one is going into an options menu in a videogame and tweaking the settings here and there. “What if Witch Egg but no sax, more guitar, different drummer...”, you get the idea. Anyway, we were talking about the album starting off strong, yes? The opening title track is certainly one of the strongest harvests from the entire improv run, with its deep bass stabs, blurting synthesizers, noodling guitar teleporting in and out of the mix, and a typically addictive Sawyer kraut-groove that could go on for days if they'd let it. 'Cultivated Graves' yet again demonstrates how effective using an acoustic bass with this kind of music can be, doubly so if it's mixed in a way that it isn't overcome by the rest of the instruments. The song builds to a frenetic and loud peak before letting out the breath and ending with a reverberating crescendo. 'Toagut' is a showcase for percussion and drums, though Dwyer's expansive, effects-coated guitar solos burn straight through to the Earth's core before we suddenly shoot off into deep space and the remaining minute is given over to peaceful keyboard sounds that flutter in-and-out across the stereo sides. As for 'Anther Dust', which my spellcheck and I both keep desperately wanting to be titled 'Another Dust'...well, it's a bit of a non-starter. There's a huge mess of sounds going on but I'm not sure the abstraction of it all ever adds up to anything interesting other than a bunch of people making a lot of formless racket.

Side B opens with 'Yuggoth Travel Agency', a title which promises more of a spirited and motorik-beat infused good time than what we actually get. But I'm fine with that; not every long song on a Dwyer project needs to be interstellar overdrive, as it were. The sleighbells are certainly a nice touch, as is the skipping/skittering beat machinations of Sawyer. For those curious, “Yuggoth” derives from Lovecraft mythology and is a planet you probably wouldn't want to visit unless you like freaky fungus/crab creatures and impossibly old ancient godlike beings who couldn't care less about your existence. But I digress. 'Hypogeum' has lots of layers of keyboard/synth sounds from Dwyer, including wind-like whooshes and twinkle-twankles, and suddenly is cut off just as the groove is getting going. 'Oneironaut' brings the energy level up a couple notches, with a loping bass-and-drums led stride that...um, also is suddenly cut off just as the groove is really getting going. Huh. The even shorter 'Minor Protocides' tries to see what would happen if you mixed Endless Garbage with Moon-Drenched, and the result is every bit as calamitous as that sounds. Frankly all it does for me is hurt my ears and make me wish I was listening to either of those albums. I'm happy to report, then, that the Dune-referencing 'Giedi Prime' completes the album with more a more graceful and eerie version of what Side A's ending 'Anther Dust' was trying to do. Just as I would say Gong Splat's album cover is mirrored by its opening title track, 'Giedi Prime' sounds like what happens when you travel all the way down that dark road into the 2001 rings of psychedelic color and come out the other side, no road or drums/percussion to ground you. Coates's masterful use of bowed bass on this track finally makes me concede that, if Sawyer is the obvious MVP of the improv records, then Coates is the most underrated player.

My general takeaway from Gong Splat is that it makes for an uneven capstone to the improv sideproject run. It simultaneously always leaves me wanting more and yet wishing a couple tracks had been cut. It should be more consistently interesting and fresh than it is, especially coming after the four albums that preceded it and did more to differentiate themselves. I suppose in some ways you can posit Gong Splat as a sampler for what the improv sideprojects have to offer, but this kind of implies that it's not the inherently satisfying and coherent feeling record that should be, too. It's especially weird for me because for most of the last year, it was unquestionably my favorite of the improv records. But in revisiting it more closely for this review, I've been continuously left underwhelmed by it. I dunno, I'm having a hard time coming to grips with my take on this one. Just as 2022 in my personal life ended up being a confused and confusing mixed-bag of feelings and events (both minor and major), this record similarly doesn't settle out into something I can easily explain and summarize. Thankfully I don't do scores for albums anymore, because this one would be a tough nut to crack. All of that said, in my opinion it's the weakest of the improv sideprojects in the sense that it sits as the least unique and the most imbalanced record in the lot, with some obvious highlights (in particular the title track) and some forgettable filler. It's essential if you like the other improv records, or even music in this vein in general—just be ready to chew and swallow the gong with the splat. Err, I mean, the wheat with the chaff.

Moon-Drenched- Moon-Drenched

 

As a dues paying member of the night owl union to begin with, I definitely am the sort who stays up way too late when I'm unemployed. Thus the last few months I've been acutely aware of the passing of the hours during late nights, as my wife sleeps in the other room, but also of the phases and positions of the moon in the night sky. I know a lot of people consider themselves stargazers, or at the very least will notice the beauty of painterly colors often seen during sunrise and sunset. I currently live in very flat, very rural Northwest Ohio so it's very, very hard to miss these views. All of this said, I think there's a particular sort who actively engage in moon watching, as it were. Weirdos and night owls and insomniacs and addicts, to name a few. While I can't say for sure, I've just never imagined John Dwyer as the kind of guy who wakes up bright and early to go for a jog and is in bed, asleep, by 11 P.M. Listening to things like the first Damaged Bug album and reading the descriptions he gives to his music using phrases like “...the familiar liminal twilight of skittering hues of black-blue...in pursuit of lunar prism beams heretofore unseen...”, I get the sense he's nightkin, too, y'know?

At the very least I'm sure he's had some acid comedown late nights, smoking a joint to ease the long journey into morning as the trip has long since ended yet the brain cells keep pinging off your skull, demanding something by turns eerie and primal and unreal to feast upon. Back in the day, proper non-musical fodder would be called 'midnight movies.' Nowadays I get the sense 'cult movie' is the more common term, though I personally think there's important distinctions between the two as much as the similarities might filter them into the same bubbling brew. I won't spend time here going into these differences, that's for another article. However this does make me think about one film that's always toed the line between 'midnight' and 'cult', The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Perhaps it's all the time I've spent unemployed and drenched in the moon but I've been thinking a lot about this movie recently as I've been trying to find a way to enter the orbit of Moon-Drenched and return with my astronautical findings. Which—and I'm not making this up—has turned out to be pretty serendipitous because the title of today's improv sideproject likely comes from the only released song (in the form of a demo), 'The Moon Drenched Shores Of Transylvania', from the scrapped sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, under the working title Revenge Of The Old Queen.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's just the poverty and insomnia getting the best of my senses. But I'd like to think I'm not. Anyway! To the music, already...

Moon-Drenched was released May 28^th, 2021. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this album might as well be credited to the group Bent Arcana, since it's all the same people (plus one), and some of the songs from this would eventually be performed live under that name. But I'll still consider this its own deal and not the sophomore album by Bent Arcana. Frustratingly, you'll see this album's title with or without the hyphen, though the album's back cover art and stickers/spine clearly have the hyphen, so I'll continue spelling it that way.

Sure sure, I know, I'm the only one who cares, let's move on! Here's the lineup:

John Dwyer- guitar/etc.

Ryan Sawyer- drums

Peter Kerlin- bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synthesizers

Kyp Malone- synthesizer

Ben Boye- Wurlitzer/electric piano

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

Marcos Rodriguez- guitar

Lanea “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita- violin

Andres Renteria- misc. percussion

Joce Soubiran- saxophones

Ben Boye is the new addition to the already established Bent Arcana crew. He's probably best known for playing keyboards with Sun Kil Moon/Mark Kozelek and in Ty Segall's Freedom Band. While I'm not familiar with his work prior to this record, Boye is credited as playing Wurlitzer, and so his contributions are more melodic and lead orientated as compared to the synth abstractions of Tomas Dolas and Kyp Malone.

If Bent Arcana felt a bit tentative and varied in its approach, Moon-Drenched throws down the gauntlet. Despite its lunar title, the record as a whole tends more toward a high energy, high octane approach punctuated by shorter, more abstract tracks. As I alluded to earlier, Moon-Drenched is the perfect soundtrack for that point of a late, late night following an acid trip where you aren't actively tripping anymore but it's rapidly approaching 4 A.M. and your brain is equal parts fried and fully awake. Perhaps you find yourself fixated on existential questions, like, “when, exactly, does the transition from night to morning happen?” or “how late is too early in the morning to eat some ice cream?” You may never find an answer but this record will keep the journey going as it gives you music that is by turns funky and Earth-y, spacey and free-floating, intense and energetic, relaxed and somnambulant.

Overall Moon-Drenched feels like the musicians are playing and interacting in a much more coherent and ever evolving way than on Bent Arcana. I still feel like I can never really hear the violin, making me wish Dwyer had used Myers-Ionita in a different improv group with less players, but otherwise I don't think there's a weak link. The rhythm section has really locked-in together, providing the perfect launchpad for everyone else to play off what they're doing. On 'Der Todesfall' and 'Spoofing', Kerlin's bass finds an interesting phrase and the other players seem to lock in on it and fill in the musculature upon his skeletal ideas. As always when he's involved, though, I think it's Sawyer who steals the show. His subtle, jazzy contributions to 'Get Thee To The Rookery' are the perfect choice to compliment the ghostly void of sounds. 'The War Clock' has to be one of his best performances, ever, a constantly shifting groove that, by itself, justifies the song's almost 13 minute length. With all due respect to the current two drummer lineup of Osees, I'd love to see what the band would sound like with Sawyer taking the rhythmic reins for an album and/or tour.

Perhaps the slimmest moonbeam of a complaint I have is that I think this album is a bit more obvious (perhaps earnest is a better word) about its influences. 'Psychic Liberation' features an edit/transition from an opening spacey section to a band in full-flight set to middle-velocity mode; a minimalist bassline and exploding guitars punctuate the full-group interplay, all in a way that feels right out of Miles Davis's On The Corner playbook. Everyone rightfully picks up on the krautrock influences on these improv records but 'Terra Incognito' absolutely feels like it could've come from the more experimental and abstract edges of Tago Mago or Yeti. Moon-Drenched feels more guitar/jam focused than Bent Arcana and certainly Witch Egg, as a result openly echoing the more jammy end of krautrock, such as heard in Agitation Free and Guru Guru.

How much of an actual issue this is for you will vary. Personally I can't get enough of this stuff, but I do think I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention that there's definitely a precedent for this music; you'll clock it instantly if you're familiar with the chemical compounds and alloys being synthesized and welded together. To be fair, though, this is like docking A Foul Form by Osees because it's a love letter to the punk and hardcore music the band grew up on. Moon-Drenched is inarguably a worthy addition to the jazz-fusion/krautrock/jam pantheon. There's plenty of people out there who will have their first taste of post-acid brain cell ping ponging with this platter, and perhaps seek out the old masters who can further feed your new hunger for this type of aural sustenance. Everything old is new again; the 1970s wave and the current era waves back as we all stare into the night sky, together, across time via the wormhole passageways of mind-bending trips, musical and otherwise.

Endless Garbage- Endless Garbage

 

Though his self titled debut is rightly considered a classic of 1980s jazz, Jaco Pastorius wanted to surprise people with his second solo album, Word Of Mouth. As such he really fought to make the song 'Crisis' the opening track. Though I haven't been able to find a verifiable written source, it's said that he recorded the song by keeping each musician in somewhat isolation from the others, fading in and out the ever-evolving track so that no musician was truly playing along with all of the others at any given time. Jaco was not particularly thought of as being part of the avant garde or free sides of jazz, so 'Crisis' was forefronted to demonstrate that artists are rarely just one thing. Personally I always took its spotlight placement on Word Of Mouth as a statement of purpose, to show fans and critics that he wasn't just the smooth sounding fusion guy who was a lynchpin of Weather Report and some of Joni Mitchell's best jazz-leaning music. What, then, do I make of the title of John Dwyer's Endless Garbage sideproject and its placement smack dab in the middle of the improv album run? Well, as we'll see in a bit, he himself explains the moniker pretty poetically, so I won't bother. As for the placement, hmmmm...It honestly isn't as important as what the album itself is telling us about his music world: All along, I was never as basic as all those garage rock albums made you think.

Released March 19th, 2021, Endless Garbage was recorded under very different circumstances than the rest of the slate of improv albums. It's inarguably the most pure improv record of them all, by which I mean the songs were completely played with no guiding principles, and other than Dwyer (who edited it together) all they could hear was the drummer, who himself wasn't involved at all beyond providing the initial spark and percussive bedrock. Since I really enjoy his writing, perhaps I should just let Dwyer himself explain. According to the press blurb for the release, it came about like this:

“...[O]ne day, I hear a frenetic, free drummer playing in his garage a few blocks from me. And I think “interesting”. I stand outside his garage staring at the wall, like a fool, for a minute, then decide to leave a note on the car parked there. This is how I ended up meeting and working with Ted Byrnes. He wasn’t creeped out, and he ended up sending me a pile of truly spontaneous drums recordings from the carport to work with. I decided to have every musician come in one at at time and just take a wild pass at their track over the drums. None of these people had ever met or played together. I was the connecting thread. I scratched the surface...but soon realized I would need heavy hitters to make this place habitable...After I spent a bit of time mixing and editing this down to a palatable offering I couldn’t help but think about human consumption. Our limitless need for material possession, for emotional acknowledgment, for as much information to be thrown in our faces in our very short time here on this mortal coil...We leave behind us a wake of destruction. Of course, there are moments of great beauty, ingenuity and compassion along the way. You just have to know where to look. Thus, “Endless Garbage” seemed a fitting title. A cacophonous and glorious sketch of ourselves.”

Anyway, here's the lineup:

John Dwyer- guitar and a bunch more

Ted Byrnes- drums/misc. percussion

Greg Coates- bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synthesizers

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

The only person we haven't seen yet in a previous sideproject is the crucial element, Ted Byrnes. A prolific solo artist and musical collaborator, his website and social media are pretty interesting and some video clips show him experimenting with non traditional instruments. In one performance he is literally playing in and on a stairwell. This makes a lot of sense given that I would describe his style on Endless Garbage as sounding like a free jazz drummer hopped up on caffeine determined to hit every single drum and surface in his house every few seconds, over and over, in a rollicking, continuous clatter. It's the sort of thing you're either going to dig and find intriguing or absolutely hate, and you better get used to it because it's most of what's going on here. Suffice it to say, though, that he isn't going too out there with the textures, so unlike the aforementioned videos you won't be listening to a man play a metal staircase handrail, broken pieces of glass, random metal dishware and, um, a pinecone and an incense holder. I feel like I've either done too many drugs or not enough to 'get' his more junkyard-derived playing, if I'm being honest, but it sure is...something.

More than any other record in his discography outside of the very first OCS release and the Sword & Sandals sideproject, Endless Garbage—like Jaco's 'Crisis'—shows John Dwyer's affinity for the experimental and free/out avenues of music. In its chaos and push-pull between melody-less instrumental texture, its rhythm-less drumming/percussion, its edited layers of sound sculpted to an extent by him, it shows that the improv sideprojects and the Panther Rotate remix album helmed by Dwyer aren't the outliers they initially appeared to be. That said, even more than Sword & Sandals, Endless Garbage is a genre-less exercise in pure sound and experimentation. One can relate something like Sword & Sandals to classic 1960s/70s free jazz/avant garde, but comparing Endless Garbage to even the most 'out' moments of a jazz group like Art Ensemble Of Chicago or live improvisations by Henry Cow and King Crimson doesn't quite cover all the gene sequences, so to speak.

I think we're getting there, though.

Let's further consider 'extreme' music I've explored in the past, unique albums that only partly conform to any strictures or genre conventions, like John Zorn's Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman (free jazz/hardcore punk), Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (noise/drone), and Autechre's glitchy, enigmatic Confield (IDM/experimental). Ah, but still not quite on the nose enough to fully explain what Endless Garbage is without hearing it for yourself. And maybe that's just it...If anything this record reminds me more of pure free-improv and pure-experimental music, completely untethered to any particular genre, the stuff that writing alone can't come close to capturing. Kissing cousin records that I also find exceedingly difficult to readily define (as I do Endless Garbage) would be things like AMM's AMMMusic, Fred Frith's Guitar Solos, some of Nels Cline's work outside of Wilco but especially Destroy All Nels Cline, the two albums by Don Caballero offshoot Storm & Stress, and, of course, Singable Songs For The Very Young by Raffi.

Maybe rather than try to define what Endless Garbage is, precisely, let's just take a swim in it. 'Vertical Infinity' starts things off, immediately setting the table with Ted Byrnes's clattering everything-and-the-kitchen-sink free drumming. Dwyer pokes around the margins with noodling guitar lines, all while Greg Coates tries to offer any kind of foundational rhythm or melody. A very overt deep breath opens 'No Flutter', which pours on the saxophones and has more of a breathing, droney feel to it before suddenly bursting into 'Goose.' This track sees Byrnes taking the forefront with an especially chaotic solo performance before blurting keyboards increasingly penetrate the dense layer of percussive clutter, giving way to a peaceful drone around the 1:30 mark. The accurately named 'Four' follows, all players seemingly blowing their brains out, including some fluttering flute in the background and a wah-wah pedal coated sax. Side B comes roaring in with 'Lucky You', sounding much like how Side A began, though Coates's booming bass repetitions create a much welcomed pulse to power the circulatory system of the eerie chaos going on, including indistinct vocals/spoken word.

'Pro-Death' never gels into anything memorably different from the rest; it could use something to set it apart on an already short and also-short-on-ideas album. This really undermines how the process used to make this record never creates chance moments of serendipitous synchronization, instead resulting in music that sounds like what it was: completely disconnected musicians improvising freely to already-recorded drumming, with no awareness of each other's playing (other than the glue that is John Dwyer holding/editing it all together). Even he can't seem to make much sense, or interesting nonsense, out of 'Pro-Death.' Things get a bit back on track with 'A Grotesque Display' thanks to the vaguely psychedelic effects processing on some of the instruments. Endless Garbage lets off the gas with the five minute closer 'No Goodbyes', fed by pretty keyboard lines, which is a bit more relaxed in its chaos. Coates attempts to stir up some excitement on bass with a energetic melody around the 3:30 mark but since only Dwyer could hear this, only he can respond with a short lived guitar interjection before we go back to the usual playbook—in other words, formless folderol.

Maybe that should've been the title.

If I am sounding a bit critical and unimpressed, I don't intend to. I'm not so sure Endless Garbage is the sort of record you can really rate or recommend anyway. What I mean is, like the aforementioned records I also find indescribable, I feel like I seek out these extreme fringes of music when I need something to really shake my world up, to give me something new and beyond the usual parameters. It's the same reason people watch weird ass movies like The Holy Mountain. You don't watch it to decide if you enjoy it or don't enjoy it, but to think about and react to something in a pure way that eludes the standard, established vocabulary used to discuss the artform. I remember once showing various clips of that movie to a longtime friend and I think it freaked him out. Likewise I am sure Endless Garbage would lead him to declare “yeah that album title sure is accurate” in a definite, dismissive way. This isn't some elitist art snob slam on him, or anyone who doesn't like what they're experiencing. I guess what I am ultimately trying to say is, you probably already know if something like Endless Garbage or The Holy Mountain is for you. Like me, you may also occasionally want to seek out things you can't easily digest, let alone explain. You may not listen to this album too often, but it'll always be there to re-open the seams of your musical mind palace and allow you to pierce the veil of the mirror held up to you and your established knowledge. There's that famous and famously overused Nietzsche quote about gazing into the abyss and it gazing back...but I don't think Endless Garbage is at all about that negation or annihilation, that evil corruption of the self by an outside/other. Rather it is, to quote Dwyer, there for you to “experience a cacophonous and glorious sketch of ourselves.”

Witch Egg- Witch Egg

 

There are times where a band name can be both illuminating and obfuscating at the same time. I find this to especially be the case when it comes to psychedelic and experimental music. The Grateful Dead is very evocative and lets you know there's going to be something otherworldly about their music, yet if you listen to Workingman's Dead you'll find the moniker confusing—shouldn't this have been made by a band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions? Similarly, groups like sunn O))) and Nurse With Wound signpost it's not going to be something especially digestible, but if you had no knowledge of what kind of music they make, you might assume they're an ambient and a hardcore punk band, respectively. While the ever-changing moniker of John Dwyer's main band, Osees, has nothing to do with the sound of the band over the decades, his side project names are squarely in the illuminating/obfuscating category. So it is with Witch Egg. Of course, a cursory Google search will reveal two possible origins of the name. Witch's Egg is the nickname for the Stinkhorn mushroom, in particular its immature egg-shaped fruiting body. The Witch's Egg, by contrast, is a children's book from 1974, summarized by user AbigailAdams26 on LibraryThing.com as the following:

“Agatha was a nasty old witch who lived alone in an abandoned eagle's nest on the top of Lost Mountain...[O]ne day a cuckoo's egg was left in her nest, and the cantankerous witch decided she would hatch it, in defiance of the mother birds who offered to take it off her hand...[R]aising Witchbird, Agatha learned to enjoyed [sic] the company of another being, and for the first time she was happy. Then in the fall Witchbird left for the south, and Agatha went back to her solitary life. Was it the end of their friendship, or would Witchbird return...?”

For all I know, though, Dwyer arrived at this name independently of these two sources. So let's put an end to this preamble and get to the good stuff. Witch Egg was released January 22, 2021 as the highly anticipated second entry in the improv side projects. Much to my surprise I found I had missed that Witch Egg had more than one release, so maybe I should ignore what I said in the Bent Arcana review about these not really being band names and moreso album names. I will be maintaining the use of italicization to indicate the album and not the band during this review. But I digress. Witch Egg's second release was a live album, simply titled Live, put out only on cassette on October 21, 2022. It captures a short four song set from August 6, 2022 featuring the full album lineup. (They opened for Flipper, which is sure a weird contrast!) There are no current plans to further release it on streaming services or other physical formats. While I couldn't find an upload of the cassette there is thankfully a HD recording of the entire show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/T2Lbm0OFcz4

Let's get back to Witch Egg, which has a smaller, different lineup than Bent Arcana:

John Dwyer- guitars & much more

Nick Murray- drums

Greg Coates- acoustic bass

Tomas Dolas- keyboards/synths

Brad Caulkins- saxophones

Nick Murray, of course, was a member of Osees for the post-Drop tour and the Mutilator Defeated At Last album, as well as the OCS 'reunion' record Memory Of A Cut Off Head. Greg Coates seems to be one of those under the radar musicians who plays a lot of random local shows where he lives, including a somewhat recent Soundgarden/Chris Cornell tribute show according to his Instagram.

On first listen, Witch Egg isn't too different from Bent Arcana. I feel that with more revisits, however, there's a real day/night, sativa/indica, Ocarina Of Time/Majora's Mask divide going on between the two records. You may have noticed that the lineup has an entirely different rhythm section, and this is the Rosetta Stone to beginning to understand where the differences come in. Nick Murray is more of a light handed drummer than Ryan Sawyer or the Osees duo of Paul Quattrone and Dan Rincon. His playing features a snare-forward, skittering, drum-rolls-and-cymbal-crashes sound that is founded more in traditional psychedelic rock and jazz-fusion. Greg Coates, meanwhile, exclusively plays acoustic bass on this record, while, interestingly, Dwyer contributes the electric bass parts, such as on 'City Maggot' (you can tell; his playing is tentative and a bit flat by comparison). Coates lacks the slippery elasticity of Peter Kerlin's playing style though his acoustic bass (and use of a bow at times) give Witch Egg part of its unique jazzy texture. I've always liked acoustic bass with an otherwise electric/amplified/woodwinds improv-heavy band, such as heard in early Medeski Martin & Wood.

The best way I can more tangibly explain the sound change from Bent Arcana is that Witch Egg as a whole has more of a jazz-forward, spacey/cosmic focus, de-emphasizing the rock, krautrock, and psychedelic/experimental elements. Outside of the rhythm section personnel turnover, the other huge change is that John Dwyer's guitar is either absent for most of the album or used as more of a background texture. Seriously, go back and pay close attention to this record and I don't think he plays a single solo or lead line! More intangibly, meanwhile, I would say Witch Egg has a hazy, late night, and eerie vibe going on, though you wouldn't know it at first.

Opener 'Greener Pools' jumps to life with a bellowing bassline and cacophony of saxophone/keyboard/guitar before quieting down into a spacey, drumless ending that segues immediately into 'City Maggot' led by Brad Caulkins' screeches and honks. 'Your Hatless Friend' maintains a low-gear chilly groove that isn't funky but makes you want to tap on the steering wheel or desk, with saxophones breathing in and out at the edges of the music, the full-band pulse gradually increasing while keyboards/synths quietly stir up the background fireflies. Suddenly all is dispelled by a chunky guitar strum that is a bit abrupt and awkward, if I'm being honest.

Side two turns down the lights even further. 'Baphomet', aptly named after an occult deity with a goat's head, has a deep, frightening synthesizer line that howls echoingly at you like a creature opening its multiple maws to begin the song that announces the end of the world. The free-floating 'Sekhu' feels like you're in the long dark of the Mines Of Moria, trying to spy apparitions in the foggy darkness, ending with a comfortingly traditional jazz bass solo. Finally, 'Arse' and 'On Your Way Now' cap off the mostly-mellow-yet-sometimes-menacing record. The former has an oddly catchy ascending saxophone line and a gibbering wordless vocal that reverberates in the backdrop, as if you're turning a corner and coming upon a ceremony being performed before it's all washed away by a staticky synthesizer. 'On Your Way Now' starts with a cycling keyboard line and a bass-heavy groan nodding back to 'Baphomet' before a dusty dusk shuffle kicks in led by airy saxophone leads and slow motion drumming. I always picture incense trails or maybe smoke from freshly blown out candles wafting in the air when I hear this song. Faint arcane babbling and Nick Murray's echoing snare hits see us out the door.

If I listen to Witch Egg more than Bent Arcana, it's only because I love how much it simultaneously narrows/focuses the sonic palette while also having a unique vibe and sound all of its own. Aside from Damaged Bug, it's rare to hear Dwyer play so little guitar, and the spacey, late night jazz atmosphere of the record really implants itself into your subconscious. Listen to it a few times in the right mood and setting and it'll infuse into your goosebumps and the hair on the back of your neck. For those who prefer In A Silent Way and Can's 'Future Days' and 'Quantum Physics' to Bitches Brew and Tago Mago, you may find Witch Egg to be one of your new favorite albums. Hell, even setting aside these pedantic preference discussions, it can become so. I know it did for me.

Bent Arcana- Bent Arcana

 

Despite notable attempts by Television and The Wipers, punk and garage rock bands have traditionally shunned long songs. To open that forbidden door is to venture beyond the sacred ground of simplicity, to betray everything they were reactions against, namely the excesses of prog rock and fusion bands. Can these warring factions ever be united? Well, ask a man like John Dwyer and he'll just laugh it off and go back to making whatever the hell he wants. After telegraphing the future with Warm Slime's title track, Osees truly opened the gates with Face Stabber's 'Scutum & Scorpius' and 'Henchlock', the latter of which is a side-long jam session that brings to mind Can's Tago Mago and Miles Davis's On The Corner and their ten-plus minute throwdowns. Were you to merely continue following Osees' studio output, however, you'd see a band who seem to have walked it back from the edge, with the transitory Protean Threat and (as of this writing) most recently the sub-half hour punk/hardcore love letter A Foul Form. It's in the extracurricular activities—live albums, The 12” Synth, Metamorphosed, Weirdo Hairdo, and Panther Rotate—the threads of Face Stabber were followed, whether long songs or otherwise. Sail even further over the edge of the known map of the Osees world upon the good ship S.S. Dwyer, and you'll land in the New World of Damaged Bug and improv-based side projects.

Bent Arcana would bookend this series of side project improv sidequests with a self-titled studio album and a live album. Today we're only concerned with said studio album, released in the depths of the covid pandemic on August 21, 2020. The sessions that would give birth to Bent Arcana took place over five days in December 2019, and featured the following players:

John Dwyer (guitars and a bunch more)

Ryan Sawyer (drums)

Peter Kerlin (bass)

Tomas Dolas (synths/keyboards)

Kyp Malone (synth)

Brad Caulkins (saxophones)

Marcos Rodriguez (guitar)

Laena “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita (violin)

Andres Renteria (misc. percussion)

Joce Soubiran (tenor saxophone)

Most of you will probably recognize Kyp Malone from the amazing TV On The Radio, while Brad Caulkins will be familiar to Face Stabber fans as the man on the saxophones. I won't pretend I know any of the other players prior to this record, but I do want to point out Joce Soubiran is one of the co-owners of the Zebulon venue, at which Bent Arcana will record their eventual live album.

Before we get to the album, a short side discussion. It can get a little weird talking about these side projects because other than Bent Arcana, the other releases are only really given an album title and not a group name. I will continue to use Bent Arcana as the band, since they do have two different releases billed to their name. Where it gets confusing is that the Moon Drenched album features all of the same players on Bent Arcana plus one, and the live Bent Arcana album has fewer members and has two songs off the Moon Drenched album. Nonetheless I will discuss them as separate bands/music projects for an attempt at simplicity. In addition, I'll italicize the album name if I'm talking about it specifically and not the band of the same name.

Anyway! Setting aside Sword & Sandals and Endless Garbage, the improv side projects led by John Dwyer are concentrated on varying combinations of jazz fusion, psych, and krautrock. Some tracks do seem like pure improvisations created on the fly through group interplay ('Outré Sorcellerie', 'Mimi') while others have a more linear progression suggesting a predetermined chord structure and framework, possibly multiple takes with different soloists leading while the others react and interact ('The Gate', 'Oblivion Sigil').

Something I keep thinking about when I listen to these albums is that, while Miles Davis was absolutely and rightly celebrated for his skill on the trumpet and his drive to innovate music, his most underrated asset was his ability to seek out other musicians who could not only help him realize his and stalwart producer Teo Marcero's vision, but to push him in new directions. (One could also credit some of his love interests with introducing him to new music). After all, the first and last songs on Bitches Brew weren't written by Davis, and the various players on that album are as quintessential to its depth of sounds, motifs, and ideas as he was. I would, of course, say the same about John Dwyer. There's no denying the talent of the current five-man Osees lineup, as well as previous members of earlier incarnations of the band. The people he got together for the improv side projects, despite not being “names” to me outside of Kyp Malone, gel with Dwyer and each other so well you'd think they'd played together for years. I will say that I don't really hear violinist Laena “Geronimo” Myers-Ionita much on Bent Arcana, and it's tough to tell if it's Dwyer or Marcos Rodriguez playing guitar. Anyway, he really knew exactly what he wanted to explore musically and had the ear to recruit people who were as skilled as him, if not moreso, and who could contribute equally. There's a reason he never names his bands something like “John Dwyer Band” or “John Dwyer's Bent Arcana” or something.

Bent Arcana is a beast of modern improv adjacent musicians collectively playing their asses off without ever letting their ego get in the way or dominating the conversation. You'll walk away with Ryan Sawyer as your new favorite drummer, a genuinely gifted player who can do loose, ever evolving funky krautrock/jazz grooves just as well as he does the kind of free-rhythm shock and awe that lives in the edges and the foundations of tracks like 'Outré Sorcellerie' and Gong Splat's 'Another Dust.' Were I tasked with choosing a MVP of Bent Arcana, though, I'd have to give it to Peter Kerlin. Whether on electric bass on 'Misanthrope Gets Lunch' or acoustic on the closing 'Sprites', his playing has a way of bringing everything into sharper focus while propelling everyone around him. The bassists of Phish and The Grateful Dead also have this style, part rhythm and part lead, that I tend to prefer in improv-heavy music, though the deadset bass repetitions of Can and Fela Kuti are obvious exceptions to the rule. Anyway, before I get to my closing thoughts I have to praise 'Mimi', a truly beautiful mid-album duet between the saxophonists that feels like stepping outside for fresh air in the midst of hotboxing a jam session. Perhaps a strange comparison, but it actually kind of reminds me of the (mostly) solo improvisations that Keith Jarrett plays on the Miles Davis boxset of live performances from late 1970, The Cellar Door Sessions 1970.

Given the ten member lineup, Bent Arcana is something of a fully-realized prelude to the coming side projects, containing bits of all the styles that would be more narrowly focused later on. This could result in the album feeling somewhat overstuffed with ideas and instruments, depending on your taste. Yet every time I give it another listen, especially on headphones, I seem to pick out things I missed before—the vocal groans and possible cuìca on 'Outré Sorcellerie', sonar-like pings and pongs from synthesizers throughout the album, what sounds like Out To Lunch-esque vibraphone on 'Oblivion Sigil'—and my appreciation for this record further deepens. Outside of Endless Garbage I sometimes think of these side projects as interchangeable. The devil is in the details, as always, and Bent Arcana is an unholy, otherworldly fine start to some of the best modern arcane musical rituals led by psych shaman/D&D dungeonmaster John Dwyer. And it only stays great from here.