A wonderfully confident beginning in Florence with Vrooom coming out a tad slower but without losing any energy. The benefits of this approach include Tony Levin’s upright bowed bass on the coda having the same space to chug up to the front of the sound. Frame is taken at a calmer pace so that the English guitarist in the group doesn’t have fingertips ablaze as a result of the double time phase shifts both during and at the end of the song.
A perfect One Time and an astonishingly vibrant Red auger well for the rolling and tumbling we get on B’boom; Bruford and Mastelotto really make this version come alive. During the improv section of Thrak Bruford executes some beautifully funky pockets but his buddies decline to lock in and get all freewheeling above the beat. As Bruf opts for his xylophone setting Pat keeps the groove going. It’s tight stuff throughout.
Indiscipline tonight is particularly incendiary and even the old warhorse, Elephant Talk, dances with a real spring in its step. Though there have been times when the inclusion of the percussion showcase Conundrum has dissipated the flow of the gig, The Talking Drum and LTIA quickly get things back up to speed. A brilliant performance from start to finish here.
A wonderfully confident beginning in Florence with Vrooom coming out a tad slower but without losing any energy. The benefits of this approach include Tony Levin’s upright bowed bass on the coda having the same space to chug up to the front of the sound. Frame is taken at a calmer pace so that the English guitarist in the group doesn’t have fingert...
Nice to hear the band strong right out of the gate -- nice audience presence between songs, and the band is more than ready to flatten hairs. However: if your sole raison d’etre is to be Fripped out, you may at times find Mr F insufficiently dominant in the mix. On the other hand, this is a very good Band Mix, revealing the doings of the Mighty Gunn without drowning the drums in the process.If any one performer dominates, it might be the Hairless One, though even he struggles to be heard under...
Nice to hear the band strong right out of the gate -- nice audience presence between songs, and the band is more than ready to flatten hairs. However: if your sole raison d’etre is to be Fripped out, you may at times find Mr F insufficiently dominant in the mix. On the other hand, this is a very good Band Mix, revealing the doings of the Mighty Gunn without drowning the drums in the process.If any one performer dominates, it might be the Hairless One, though even he struggles to be heard under the delightfully grim guitar weight of "Red" -- a performance so intense that it appears to exhaust our Noble Vocalist (despite not singing!). Fortunately he recovers his breath by "Matte Kudasai", which makes no sense at all because the intervening material smoulders and explodes with all the danger we expect.After hearing the deepened presentation of the later shows, it’s clear these May ’95 shows have their own quality in fresh enthusiasm. "One Time" is indeed breath-takingly perfect, and Mr Levin’s bowed bass drives "THRaK" into "aTTaK" mode.In the brown view, we find the occasional-if-brief excessive politeness in some spots mid-show. Sound does seem to clip a bit on the more VROOOMy portions, which to my ears just makes it more genuine. After all, if I wanted safe Crimson, I wouldn’t be listening to this ... a keeper all around with plenty of highlights.
