Astrum, drum and Esme

Switched on Synths is always a good time at the House of Targ (and they have a couple of excellent lineups next months, headlined by Rational Youth and Steve Summers). This edition saw a return by For Esme, a hot set from Montreal's Saxsyndrum and the inimitable Infinity's Astrum (aka Nick Doyle) and his box of many wires and switched and doodads. Here's Nick!



So many dials ...



Fisheye action!



Modular action!



Saxsyndrum began as a duo of Nick on drums and David on sax, with both piloting an array of electronics to boot. Lately they've been joined by David's occasional Year of Glad collaborator, A.P. Here's Nick!



Saxophone action with David!



A.P. sings!



Faceoff action!



Sax-and-drum action!



More A.P. and Nick!



Bonus saxophone!



Nick goes electronic!



They were a heck of an act to follow, but For Esme did a pretty capable job. Here's Martha!



Guitar action with Nathan!



Percussive action, and also Dave on bass!



More Dave!



More Nathan!



Cloudy action!



The whole lot!



More Nathan and Martha!



More bass!



Another solid synthetic night.

Digital age

In the last couple of years there's been a big jump in the amount of synth in my musical diet. The "retrosynth" genre, fuelled  by the re-release of soundtracks from the 1970s and 1980s by John Carpenter, Goblin and company, as well as modern practitioners such as Umberto and Crypt Vapours have boosted the profile of all things blip and Moogy. There are plenty of synth-fanciers in Ottawa, with House of Targ hosting the first "Switched On Synths" night last Thursday, with sets from RAAS, Goldeneyes and Nick Doyle. Goldeneyes kicked things off. I can't say much more about him, though I have my suspicions his stage-name is inspired by the classic N64 James Bond game.



On to Nick Doyle, whose performance was certainly fun to look at as he manipulated a bunch of modular synths all wired together.



It sounded good, too.



RAAS (a.k.a. Michael and Kerry) concluded things with some audio-visual noise-making.



Setting-changing action!



Backdrop-adjusting action!



There was also some guitarwork near the end.



Things are off to a good start, I'd say.