An egg fries in a pan, bubbling, churning, swirls out over a black void. Hecuba scuba dives inside the yoke, creatures trudging in plasma, a gooey rhythm slowly cooking itself in circles. Let’s say the Echo was the pan on Tuesday night, and we were all swimming in pre-chicken primordial ooze under a discoball, searching for that question: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? And so, how does the chicken cross the road? Seems whimsical? But it’s deep. This is tonight’s theme. Laco$te was a perfect opener for Hecuba. At first, Laco$te’s vocalist, “x,” had her back to the crowd while she belted out reverbing vowel anthems, a small cat rubbing its back against a chair. The beats and distortion take over, building a wall of sound knitted with ivy, then suddenly kitty tears through it pep-rally style, leaps off stage and begins grinding on the not-drunk-enough to dance audience, doing backbends and round-offs between people’s legs. What? Yes. Next up, Barr, a tall man kneeling on a table in clear light, making long noises, sometimes with a tambourine. The night grows thicker with the strange, a blue mist rising out of catacombs, tickling the mood with mint and clover. Take a little bit of Exorcist on a Caribbean vacation, don’t forget your reptilian unitard, and we enter the 7th layer, where Isabelle Albuquerque and Jon Beasley of Hecuba tap and blow into a psychedelic stethoscope attaching itself to your ear like a parasite. Here’s where it gets really fun.

– Daiana Feuer