You’re never quite sure with the Fluc whether the gig you want is upstairs in the Fluc proper or downstairs in the Wanne. Going through the correct set of doors assumed particular importance on this occasion, since while one venue was showcasing an evening of avant guitar tunesmithery, the other was set to host a men-only strict leather fetish night. I wouldn’t have much fancied wandering into the wrong room by mistake, but fortunately the queue of fearsome-looking black-clad moustachioed types snaking halfway back to Praterstern tipped the wink that it was up the stairs for me.

In a way, this evening could be seen as an appendix to the Editions Mego 20th anniversary celebrations that took place in Vienna and several other cities earlier this year. Not only was headliner and Mego signing Bill Orcutt, now on his third release for the label, making his Vienna début, but label boss Peter Rehberg could also be seen spinning the discs up at the back. Completing the line-up was local hero and psych overlord Eric Arn, on a busman’s holiday from his day job fronting Primordial Undermind. In keeping with the theme of the evening, Arn left his electric axe at home and treated us instead to a short but compelling set of acoustic guitar inventions. Their ghostly traces and spiralling repetitions evoked pure and ineffable sadness, while for an unexpected cover of Rain Tree Crow’s “Every Colour You Are” Arn added cool, affectless vocals that effectively offset the trancelike quality of his playing.

Having sat and listened appreciatively to Arn’s set, Bill Orcutt cut a deceptively nonchalant figure as he shambled onto the Fluc’s low stage. It’s worth mentioning, for those who may be new to him, that Orcutt plays a standard acoustic guitar from which the A and D strings have been removed. The results are mesmerising, as the guitarist savagely deconstructs traditional approaches to the guitar with his fierce, livid playing. What emerges is some kind of eerie, shattered take on the blues, with Orcutt making occasional wordless vocal utterances while shooting angry sparks from his devastated guitar.

Orcutt had lost his capo at some point along the road, so he was forced to improvise with a small piece of card which he was able to jam between the strings and the fretboard. Such a minor distraction was no problem for the guitarist, who continued to play with a staggering level of intensity. I was very much hoping that he would play his version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which has captivated me since I first heard it (there’s a wonderful film of it on YouTube, in which the camera never leaves the body of the instrument). And indeed he did play it in a medley with “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, the two songs together describing a fractured and perilous vision of modern America. It’s a vision, moreover, that bleeds through all of Orcutt’s music, steeped as it is in turbulence and rage.