We hustled in to the venue to secure our spots close to the stage. The suspense was building as we waited, anticipating a great performance from the band we hadn’t seen since early September in Chicago.
The lights went down, and the conversations in the crowd quickly elevated to cheers of excitement as the LEDs illuminated and so began the Activation. The five members of Sound Tribe came on stage and dove right into Golden Gate, followed by a fan favorite, Instantly. Only two songs in and they already had the crowd dancing and grooving. Clearly they were gearing up for an epic night.
As always, Saxton’s lights were on point, a constant wave of rainbows to my eyes. Accompanied by the Great Cycles Spectacle Mayan temple shaped LED visualizer made for quite the visually mesmerizing experience.
Check out the video of Instantly:
Sound Tribe kept it crunchy going with Arigato. Next was Blu Mood, an old fan favorite from years ago that has recently been brought back into their live show repertoire, featuring a pretty unforgettable hook by Hunter Brown on guitar. They got the funky grooves going with T.W.E.L.V.E. and Move my Peeps, and rounded out the first set with some high energy songs, the Rabble and One a Day. Murphy of course signed off with his familiar voice “Were gonna take a short little break, have some water, meet some new friends we’ll be back!”
The second set opened with Scheme (my guess was my favorite song Scheme Reprise) so I was pleased. Grow was another fantastic groovy jam along with Squares and Cubes, a song I haven’t personally seen live or really listened to. They slowed it down with Looking Back on Earth and finished the second set with Aimlessly.
Breathe In is a great song that features Phipps on some beautiful piano solos. This song is a great example of a mixture of STS9’s Axe the Cables acoustic style shows and their more electronic, crunchy Great Cycles Spectacles shows. Overall a great piece of beautifully written music. When the Dust Settles is always a great song to end the night on. High Energy to lkeep you dancing and allows the band some freedom to jam a little bit. After the show I did not want them to stop playing, but we are lucky enough to be seeing Sound Tribe Sector 9 on April 11th in Minneapolis and the following night at home in Madison.
Here is the Setlist from the Riverside Theater
Set 1: Golden Gate, Instantly, Arigato, Blu Mood, T.W.E.L.V.E., Move My Peeps, The Rabble, One A Day
Set 2: Scheme, Simulator, Grow, NIN> Tooth, Squares and Cubes, Moon Socket, Looking Back On Earth, Aimlessly
Encore: Breathe In, When The Dust Settles
Click Here for a sound board audio recording of the show from STS9’s own record label 1320 Records
Stoneway Music 