Spirit Of The Beehive made their way to Brooklyn’s newest live music venue, Brooklyn Made, on Thursday night in support of their outrageously creative 2021 LP ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH. The five-piece Philadelphia based band drew a sold out crowd to the week-old venue, stretching out the legs of the new PA with their heavily distorted and layered backing tracks.
One can always expect growing pains in a new space, and Brooklyn Made was no exception. The group was forced into a brief delay after running through the opening track of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH as the backing distortion tracks were not coming through the main speakers. The sound techs resolved the issue, and the band fell right back into step much to the delight of an extremely patient and understanding audience.
Brooklyn Made is a sprawling space with several different areas, but the performance space is quite intimate and very unique in presentation. A super-wide, crescent shaped stage lines the back wall (similar in style to The Sultan Room) with a very shallow, sunken dance floor that allows for even late-comers in the back row to be rather close to the stage. Off the back doors is a separated bar area equipped with a pool table and direct sound feed from the live show. There is a courtyard, with a staircase up to a large rooftop space overlooking the many Bushwick Collective street murals and offering views of the Manhattan skyline.
ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH is a continuous, artistic expression of the themes suggested in the title. Different songs cyclically build into ferocious rhythms and fade into distorted ambience over and over again across the 37 minute runtime. Motifs and instrumental pieces do not repeat themselves, even with the confines of a single track, and the listener reaches the end of the record with a strong desire to play the album back. On first listen, the record seems more of an unfinished collection of demos, but the more you listen, the more you discover a meticulously crafted artistic experience the delivers a new perspective with each listen.
Spirit Of The Beehive have one more scheduled show on this run, which takes place Friday, October 8th in Washington DC. The band will also open for a couple shows on the Japanese Breakfast residency at Union Transfer in Philly next August. Check out a full concert calendar for the new venue Brooklyn Made HERE. More photos from the Brooklyn Made show below.
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