Go with the flow

Friday night I headed over to the House of Targ for some heavy, and mostly instrumental, music. Toronto's Electric Magma have just released a new, pinball-themed album Silver Ball, so Targ was certainly the right spot for the show. Ottawa's own instrumental overlords, Monobrow, were also on the bill, and a new trio of familiar faces, Rex Heck, kicked things off. About a month ago I caught MBG (a.k.a. Martindale, Barber and Granger) on the Targ stage. Rex Heck still has the MB, but it's Brad Martel of Amalgamation and Groovegasm on the kit. Here's Dave!



Danny handles the low end.



Brad hits!



Extra Danny!



Shooting and singing action!



Rhythm section action!



The whole blurry lot!



Monobrow played a killer set. They've been at the recording studio and plan to have their latest single up on Bandcamp soon-ish.



Paul frets!



Brian blurs.



Fuzzy action!



Extra Sam!



More Paul!



More Brian!



The whole lot!



Electric Magma rounded off the evening with some heavy duty riffology.



Marshall stacked action with Tim Reesor!



Bass action with Tryg Smith!



Neil Lukewich hits!



Faceoff action!



More guitar!



The whole lot!



Fisheye action!



Good sounds all around.

Stop and pop

I took another trip to the House of Targ Friday night to check out Amalgamation's finale show ("for a long time"), check out newish local outfit Sweet Alps (whose sound fits in well with Amalgamation's prog-edged indie rock) and Montreal power-poppers Dany Laj & The Looks, and spend most of my laundry quarters playing pinball.

Sweet Alps started things off. Here's bassist Colleen McKeracher, guitarist and singer Nicholas O'Gorman, drummer Sean Paterson and guitarist Jamie Bogue.



Nicholas sings!



Jamie frets!



Sean hits!



Singalong action!



More guitar!



Colleen sings!



Amalgamation have said they're calling it a day; I've caught them a few times since January 2010, when they were the sole mainly electric act among a bunch of acoustic acts.



More guitar!



Percussive action!



Bass action!



Even more guitar!



The whole lot!



Dany Laj & The Looks take their playbook straight from the 1970s school of power-pop, with nods to Dwight Twilley, Bob Segarini and others. Laj has a very steady rhythm section in his Looks as well, Jeanette Doling and Lewis Handford.



Singalong action!



Lewis hits!



Jeanette sings!



Extra Dany!



Bonus Jeanette!



Even more Dany!



Feedback action!



Faceoff action!



The end! For me, anyway - my new schedule  gets me up at 5:30 a.m., so 1:30 was running a little late for me ...



Also, they stop running buses down Bank St. before midnight ... what the heck is up with that?

All together now

Amalgamation were the next outfit on stage at Doldrums. They had added a couple of new players for this outing.

Guitarist Andrew Sutherland was among the new duo.



Brandon sings!



Percussive action from Bradley!



More Brandon, and the shadowy figure of new bassist Alex Dulong.



Amalgamated action!



Extra Andrew!



And slightly less shadowy Alex.



Since then they've released their new album, Permutations.