Orphanage - Utrecht 2005

Garcia

After a close inspection we see that the guy behind the drums, wearing orange sunglasses, was not the new speed skating world champion Erben Wennemars but still, he was no stranger. Tonight Sureel, Orphanage's drummer, has to do some endurance training while performing with his two bands. Garcia, the new name of DisDept, is a band from Utrecht and they play some basic solid rock music.

Music
The music was like it should be, well played and all musicians were in sync. The individual musical performance was good though nothing exceptional was done during the gig. The music wasn't too far from main stream rock apart from the use of a speaker horn. The sound at dB's was a little loud all night but otherwise it was okay.

Performance
It looked like the band was limited by the size of the rather small stage, but in fact the band playing later in the evening showed that even 7 people can do well on a stage like this. Apart from the dramatic moves of the singer, the rest of the band's performance was rather pale. The performance of the singer couldn't prevent the fact that the audience started to lose interest after a while. There were just a few lights around the stage, the light engineer tried to make something out of it but it never got exciting. Still, given the possibilities of the stage and lights it was sufficient.

Rating
Music 7
Performance 6
Sound 7
Light 6
Total  7 (6,5)

Orphanage

Like I said in the intro, the band has undergone some major changes: they now have two guitar players instead of one and bald Guus has moved back to the background to play keyboards again. The band used this gig as a try-out for the band. After many rehearsals separated from each other and only two times playing together as a group, this was surely a big challenge.

Music

This is where the difficulties started for the band. The individual skills of the band's members were rather good, though not everybody was in good shape during this gig. Guus had some problems with singing but apart from this everything sounded rather good. This was especially true for George whose voice was in good shape and maybe even more for Rosan whose singing was probably the best I've ever heard from her. The real problem came with intros of some of the songs; the band seemed to hesitate or in some cases started off wrong. However, it was tackled well and fast so it didn't really slow down the concert. It made the audience forgiving in their enthusiasm and so they should be. This was a try-out, mistakes like these happen, but the fact that there were just so few gave me the impression Orphanage is ready to rock our heads again. The sound was a bit too loud for the small venue; the instrument mix was, however, well balanced.

Performance

A small 4x4m stage, 7 musicians cramped onto it; behold the challenge to make a good show. But Orphanage managed to do this really well. Way in the back Sureel and Guus were unfortunately virtually invisible, Remko (bass) was partially hidden between the guitarists, both were in the front, right and left of the stage. This made sure there was plenty of room for the elegant Rosan to sing and for the energetic George to bounce on stage as usual. With his big charisma and his marvellous facial expressions George managed to drag the audience into the music while Rosan's enchanting moves made sure we stayed there. The light, like with Garcia's performance, was nothing special but it made sure nobody had to miss any part of the show.

Rating
Music 7
Performance 8
Sound 7
Light 6
Total  7 (7.2)