SPICE DOUBT

This is a curious live-in-the-studio release from Ozric Tentacles, who recorded it a couple of days after a barnstormer of a set at the Fillmore. A studio had been experimenting with the potential of streaming audio - this was back in the late 1990s, so forget about your YouTubes and your Twitches, we're talking the Realplayer era here - and so the Tentacles obligingly agreed to test-drive the technology with a live show streamed directly over the 1998-era Internet.

Fortunately, Spice Doubt doesn't come in that low bitrate quality those of us old enough remember from those times - you get here the high-quality input, not the low-quality output your dial-up connection would have served up had you tried to listen to the original stream. The band opt for a high-energy, fast-paced set, with less of the slow reggae groove we're used to hearing from them and more of the fusion-like technical virtuosity which we've always known they've had, but which could often be overlooked. As a result, Spice Doubt manages to have a somewhat different sound from, say, Live Underslunky (their previous official live release), amply justifying its existence as more than a document of an ahead-of-its-time online experiment.