@thebabysmouth said:

more than fair Nicho. They may not be as wild and manic in their best jams. But from a sophistication and listening standpoint, they don't search as much as they used to, they just get right down to work. And they are still primarily a funk band. That is their dominant mode of improv. IMO

@nichobert said:

Would it be fair to say that the improv from recent years is a lot more complex than the late 90s?

Just heard BGA 2012 Crosseyed while real stoned, ended up in my "phish couldn't SNIFF this kind of jam fall 97" mood

I'm not really sure what constitutes "complexity." But it's an interesting question.

From a harmonic perspective, tension and release jams from the 1.0 era could be argued to be very complex, as the tension measures often had Mike, Trey, and Page creating three different kinds of dissonance before resolving to the tonic together. That's definitely complex, but we don't hear that a lot anymore.

Hey hole jams are as complex as the band chose to make them, which sometimes wasn't very complex at all. Listen to the Big Cypress Sand > QT as an example -- one of my favorite jams ever and a total hey hole thing. It transforms at a snail's pace, always one piece and one player at a time, like a game of Jenga. A very advanced idea, but not complex in the way I think of complex.

When I think of 1997 though, I think of telepathy, and those spontaneous modulations that just fucking ***happened***. Listen to the one in the 11/21/97 Ghost (I don't have a timing handy but if you are familiar with the jam, you know what I'm talking about). Is that "complex?" I don't think so at all. I think it is just a magical byproduct of years of connection.