Maruja at Brudenell Social Club
@maruja
This piece can be read alongside listening to the band as I wrote it during the gig, or separately with apt imagination skills
You know a gig is good when you come home searching for red adidas sweatpants, itching to take some black and
white photos and start a passionately inspired band. Must note wanted to take my phone out and take a picture every
single 20 seconds. Bump into lead Harry Wilkinson at pub and you will be out til about 7am. Super sound. He loves
it. Came out with a top off and left with a sweat on. Proper frontman. Had bald men feeling like they had a full head
of hair again. Plus who taught the saxophonist to play like that? The pharaohs or something?​
Who mentored Maruja?
Dancing like Johnny rotten on a “finding himself” journey through Bhutan and Cambodia. Haven’t seen heads
rocking like this since playing Bulls On Parade on Guitar hero. Saxophonist shaking the tambourine like he’s been
teaching us to play and we can’t grasp it; tambourine not even mic’d up, he just fancied it. If you have ever gone to
a gig and thought “gworh, these guys love playing their music”, then turn up to the next Maruja local and really see
what that looks like.
Halfway through the gig they said if you weren’t already impressed “let’s improv”. Frontman had sweat dripping off
his chin but trust me no sweat was broken during this ensemble, they had a chemistry like your maths teacher and
algebra, your p.e teacher and the lost kit box, Brudenell social club and good bands. What a fantastic run. Maruja
tease the climax of the song just as quickly as I can come up with sentences to describe the sound. Maruja play like
they’re in a venue of 10,000. I can see myself in a desert tropic right now hearing the improvised tune cinematically
overlaying my journey to find water in the everlasting heat and outstretching desert. My feet aspiration-ally traipsing
through fine granules of gold sand.
Anyway, phone down and let me listen; I’ll finish the rest later. Nevermind- If that wasn’t enough the drummer
Jacob Hayes is playing the drums like he built the drum kit from scratch.
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Next thing you know we’re back in gloomy 80s UK talking about corporations forcing us to swallow pills to
regulate our emotions and looking down on us. Populism confronted and mosh-pitted on top of, the crowd stomping
rebellious feet in the face. Talk about range. About three quarters of the way through I realised ..... didn’t even have
any shoes on, just some fluffy socks. Fluffy socks against populism is something I didn’t expect to see but
something I find comfortingly humorous and empowering.
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Finally the saxophonist Joseph Carroll parts the crowd like a private school kid’s groundbreaking curtain hair-do to
scream “are we ready Leeds?”. What do I see? A baby face with mick jagger’s hair next to an ex-northern soul
enthusiast living it like the good old days screaming in unison “come on then”.
Kakistocracy starts with a collective crowd: “oh yes” or “finally”. And that’s all there is to say on that one. At long
last the guitarist Matthew Buonaccorsi and sax-playing Carroll develop a soundscape to put us to sleep, the smoke
from the stage machine a mirage of an ungodly oasis and the sweat of the moshpit the final bit of water from our
body out in god knows where. The crowd grains of sand in a vast desert. We just want one last dance and one more mile before arriving at the pond.
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A final message of unity and power against global oppression: “free, free Palestine” on repeat, the crowd’s chants
filling the amphitheater. I have never seen a band leave the stage with a somber and every single person in the crowd
gutted to see them leave like that, and I’ve been to a good few.
Pack your amps up and shoot off to next show Maruja, you were absolutely brilliant. How they make such a sound I
will never know, but that’s what I would say with sonic illiteracy.
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Photos @argirisliosis
