A wild night with Oruã live in New York

Live music walks a fine line between perfect coordination and joyous unpredictability. On one hand, for a concert to go smoothly a million little details need to be ironed out to ensure that the show will go on. It’s imperative that every person in every band and all of their instruments be at the venue on the day of the show and that each musician and each instrument is in working order and ready for that night and on and on and on.

On the other hand, for a concert to be fun, the audience doesn’t want to know what’s coming next. The crowd at every show will change and create a new vibe in the venue, familiar songs must be made unique with adlibs and solos, the band must perform in a way that augments the music in a way the crowd would never even imagine. But when this walk on the knife’s edge between coordination and unpredictability becomes too much, those bands trying can slip and fall and be cut to ribbons, leaving those attending the confetti-strewn show to possibly walk away saying “that was wack” (we’ve all been to a show like this).

However, in complete defiance of a need for coordination and logistical structure, but yet still shredded by the events of the evening, Oruã took the stage on August 15th, and the Brazilian-based and self-proclaimed “poor man’s jazz. Working-class krautrock” tore the house down.

Oruã is an avant-garde psychedelic rock quartet that calls Brazil’s Carnaval city its home. They were originally set to play at the new Knitting Factory location in New York’s East Village at 8:30 PM on August 15th. Two weeks before the show, the venue was changed to Ridgewood’s Trans-Pecos and the show was now set to begin at 8 PM. On the day of the show, reps for the band reached out to let me know the venue had changed again and the band would now be playing at Gold Sounds Bar in Brooklyn. Trans-Pecos and Gold Sounds are a stop apart on the L line which at the very least allowed those who had not heard about the last-minute location change to still arrive on time without having to call a car or travel an hour to a new location. On this front, the powers-that-be pulled through. I arrived at 7:30 PM to find four bands checking in with the house audio guy and the door guy. None of them were Oruã.

Gold Sounds Bar is a dive bar with a venue space with a stage in the back room. The tables are wobbly but the counters and glasses are clean and the beer is cold. They have thrash playing on the speakers and Natural Born Killers is looping on the two-bar televisions. I sit down at one of their soda fountain booth tables to try to figure out what is happening with the band I am here to see. After I sit down the door guy comes up and sits at the table I’m working at and asks me who I am and who I’m with. He doesn’t ask aggressively but genuinely. He explains the venue change pulled him in on his day off and no one supplied him with a list of who was supposed to be there. He gives me the OK to shoot the show and steps outside for a cigarette before bursting back inside with his voice raised. He hustles in with his arms outstretched, yelling his words in exasperation. He informs the room that the lineup for tonight will be six bands.  The four bands I saw at check-in were the local bands the venue had booked for that night and the two-band-bill I was set to see had been added to the existing lineup. This show was set to begin at 9:00 PM and finish who knows when. There is a long night ahead of him.

As the night progressed the local bands one by one took the stage and waves of fans and bar regulars flowed in and out of the Bushwick dive. The bar stays more packed than the event space in the back but the bands play on for everyone there. The concert space in the back is filled with fog machine haze and the smoke screen is lit up by burning colourful Fresnel lights and a disco ball spinning in the centre of the ceiling.

Bar patrons and audience members alike wander in and out of the concert space. The former walks through the haze in search of the bar’s only bathroom. The latter check in on the other acts as they wait for theirs to go on. The doorman, who introduces himself as Tony, works as a bartender at Gold Sounds most nights. He sits with me for a while and checks in on me as the night goes on. He has a foul mouth but he loves the bar and by extension all the people in it. The later it gets, the more filled the back room gets and the louder the bands get. The concert space shrinks as the crowd shuffles in and finds their places to stand. You can’t escape the intimacy with the bands. If you talk or text during the show, the actors will know.

Oruã began their set after midnight and the bell curve of attendance had begun to shift slightly downward as Thursday night turned over to Friday morning. As it is said, so it shall be; the psychedelic rock band began their set with a drawn-out ethereal jam, bringing each instrument into play one by one until the whole group were ticking like a clock.

The guitarist is the last to join in. He’s tinkering with his instruments and effect pedals. He’s dragging a live quarter-inch cable against the metal connectors of the effect pedals chasing a crackling coming through his amp. The house audio guy brings him a new stereo cable thinking the cause is a bad cable but the guitarist ignores the outstretched hand of the audio guy offering him the new cable. There seems to be some tension between the band and the house staff created and further perpetrated by the late hour, the last-minute venue change, and now the audio issues. The issue appears to be that one of his pedals isn’t passing audio the way it is designed to and the bassist comes over to help diagnose the problem and together they fix it. Well after midnight, the show may finally begin.

Their sound is fast-paced with heavy distortion and sharp weighty bass notes that drive over pounding symbols, thick drums and wild sticky synths. The guitarist holds his instrument like a rifle while he plays attacking the strings with a fever that makes him seem possessed. The basset stands centre stage and acts as the focal point of the band and his presence is the most calm and reserved of the lot. The whole show he bobbed and bounced to the music keeping his steady pounding groove the center point of the show.

The guitarist and the synth were set on either side of the bassists with the drummer behind the three. The group barely paused between songs as they jammed their way through their set. Their music is one part noise, one part jazz, and one part psychedelic all on the rocks with a brutal kick at the end. It was not sing-along-music but it was mind-melting and standing listening in that smoke-filled glowing room created an incredible atmosphere for music no matter how delayed it ended up being.