Watch and wind

If you were tired of all that singing business, or really like saxophones (or both!) Pressed was the place to be  on Friday as St. John's Ouroboros returned for a show with tourmates The Night Watch. The quintet features four horn players and a drummer, and like to mix their Balkan jazz with a steady dose of world music. Here's saxophonists Greg and Susan and drummer Andrew!



Nicole and Chris round out the combo!



Andrew hits!



Woodwind action!



Extra Greg!



More Nicole and Chris!



More Susan!



Baritone action!



Extra Andrew!



Saxophone action!



Even more saxophone!



The whole lot!



And also a bit of clarinet.



On to The Night Watch; I caught them just last month at Pressed for their CD reveal. The lighting for that show was pretty bad, and I didn't do much shooting; it was a little better this time around. Here's Nathanael on guitar (also from Musk Ox).



Violin action with occasional Ox Evan!



Rythm section action with Daniel and Matt!



More guitar!



Extra Matt!



More Daniel!



Extra Evan!



Even more Nathanael!



Since the stage wasn't crowded enough, the folks from Ouroboros came up to add some horns and percussion.



Side view action!



And so on!



A really jumping show.

The outer limits

Saturday night I headed over to Pressed for some heavy metal action as local instrumentalists Night Watch release their long-worked-on EP Boundaries.Last time I saw them was at Cafe Luneta in January 2014. Guitarist Nathanael is also the man behind Musk Ox (violinist Evan is another Ox), but the Night Watch is a significantly louder affair. Here's Nathanael making introductions.



Bass action from Matthew!



Hair-tossing action from Daniel!



Musky action from Nathanael and Evan!



Greenish action!



Tapping action!



More Matthew!



Extra Daniel!



After that the sun went down and the stage lighting was too dark for me to shoot.

Saints and sentries

It's been a busy week for me, what with school starting up, thus the short delay in posting stuff from Friday's show at Luneta Cafe. It was an eclectic evening, kicking off with shoegazers Destroy Clocks, continuing with rugged fuzz poppers Saint Clare and concluding with instrumental metallurgists The Night Watch. Unfortunately I missed Destroy Clocks due to a late-night school project, so let's go straight on to Saint Clare.

The band takes its name from former Shakey Aches frontman Matthew Saint Clare, and also includes Richard Jeffrey and Ryan Shannon from that band. They profess fandom for Arcade Fire and various Elephant 6 combos. I thought they sounded like some of Spencer P. Jones' stuff.



Saxophonic action with Morgan Grant!



Bumpy action!



That's Daniel Devries on the drums.



Richard Jeffrey of Golden Famile and others rocks the Telecaster.



Matthew sings!



Extra Richard!



On to The Night Watch after the jump ...