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Weekend roundup: Events and things to do in Ottawa!

Written

Karen

on Thursday, September 2, 2010

Photo courtesy InOttawa.ca on Flickr.

Alrighty, folks - for those of you lucky enough to stick around town for the long weekend, you’re in for a few treats.

Yes, the Bytowne Burlesque Revue is happening - and, if you’re in the market for your own burlesque name, check out the ingenious suggestions from fellow readers. If you’re hoping to fit in a last summer festival or two, be sure to schedule in the Serbian Festival happening down on Albion Road. For another festival, all you’ve got to do is look up - waaaaaay up - as the hot air balloons from the Festival de montgolfières de Gatineau float by overhead all weekend long.

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Win tickets to the Bytowne Burlesque Revue!

Written

apartment613

on Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Photo courtesy of Justinvl on flickr

Post by Lauryn Kronick

One can’t help but notice that Ottawa has been getting slightly more sexy and risqué over the past few months. Much of this is thanks to the pleasing, teasing ensemble of Rockalily Burlesque.

On Saturday, September 4, the Bronson Centre (211 Bronson Ave) will be transformed into the largest sultry, deliciously raunchy cabaret venue that Ottawa has seen. Rockalily is bringing us the Bytowne Burlesque Revue, which will feature more than six burlesque troupes and dancers to get us all hot and bothered.

Along with other local favourites, the Sexual Overtones (including the Puff Sisters and Muffin Tops), and welcoming out-of-town beauties Boudoir Rouge from Hamilton, Toronto’s Starlight Burlesque and Fiona Flauntit and the divine Miss Sarah Diva from Halifax, this is by far Ottawa’s biggest burlesque extravaganza to date, Rockalily’s Miss Helvetica Bold says.

“This is going to be huge – nothing like this has ever been done in Ottawa before. It’s a collaborative brainchild that will hopefully be more attractive to the mainstream audience,” she adds.

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Release your inner firefly at Lumière

Written

apartment613

on Monday, August 30, 2010

Photo courtesy the Lumière Festival website.

Post by Ashley.

The glory days of summer are winding down. Sweaters, back-to-school signage and cooler evenings abound. So before it disappears completely, be sure to make time for one last summer festival. Easily my favourite event of the summer, I vote you go to the Lumière Festival.

Hosted annually by the Crichton Cultural Community Centre, Lumière is a celebration of both visual and performance art. The shining star of the event will be “The Evening of Light” on September 4th, when New Edinburgh Park will be set alight by displays from visual artists. While you tip-toe through the lanterns, various performance artists (fire spinners! stilt walkers! theatre groups! bands!) will be both stationed in and wandering through the park.

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The Love Machine says it’s time for Sweater Weather! Win their new CD.

Written

Samantha

on Friday, August 27, 2010

Photo by Jamie Kronick, courtesy of The Love Machine.

So you may see Justin Bieber wearing a Love Machine t-shirt in the future, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking out their new album, Sweater Weather. Ottawa indie rockers The Love Machine have been together since 2004, and have played enough local shows that you, or your mom, should have heard of them by now. The band that released their first album some five years ago would probably have a hard time recognizing their new music. Allan Gauthier, guitarist and vocalist explains, “We just grew up.” It’s been three years since the last record and having that time to perfect the songs allowed them to transform their hooky pop-melodies into more mature rock anthems akin to Kings of Leon or Thrice.

Old fans won’t feel alienated however; three songs have been re-recorded to be included on the latest album (including ‘Squirrels,’ and ‘A little Cursive in all of us’). They will notice a huge difference in vocals and the moody and dark take of the sound. ‘The album is essentially about the last three years of our lives. We’ve all dealt with deaths, break-ups, etc. It’s not like I’m writing a diary, writing about life is the easiest thing I know.” Gauthier adds, “We just love being together and playing.’’

Unique to The Love Machine is that the guys all write as a collective force and that means that sometimes songs can take up to a year to complete, like ‘Be a Path’ (check spooky video here). What they are are perfectionists, feeling out and adding to the 15 new songs in live and jam settings under careful guidance of Jonathan Chandler from Amos the Transparent. ‘Those guys have been like big brothers to us,’ says Gauthier, saying that it was them that introduced them to their label 45 Records (an independent based out of Toronto).

The Love Machine are headlining the i(heart)music Festival on Saturday, August 28th at Mavericks. Apt613 hooks you up! We’re Ggiving away one copy of The Love Machine’s new album! Tell us your favourite Love Machine song by emailing editors@apt613.ca Contest ends this Sunday. Winners will be contacted by email.

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Music, motorcycles, and Guinness ice cream: an interview with the Hilotrons’ Mike Dubue

Written

apartment613

on Friday, August 27, 2010

Photo courtesy missionlessdays on Flickr.

Apartment613 contributor Lidija Marie Rozitis had breakfast at Ada’s last week with Mike Dubue, lead singer for Ottawa indie popsters the Hilotrons, one of the many talented artists heading up to Wakefield this weekend for WakeFest. They take the stage at the Black Sheep Inn on Saturday at 9pm.

How did the Hilotrons first come about?

I have always been writing music, constantly. I have always been part of bands. I started this lifestyle of music when I was a teenager when I was really into soundtracks and scoring. I started composing music for live theatre and then moved on to soundtracks and sound design. So I have always had this aspect in my life where I am being really creative and contributing creatively to bands. And then I started writing all these songs and realized I needed to start my own band and have full control over what I wanted to do, instead of always collaborating. So that’s what I did, and that’s how it started. I met Paul [Hogan], our guitar player, and he had basically the same idea to break free of all these bands and do his own thing. We made a deal and said, “I’ll play in your band, if you play in mine.” So that’s what happened. I have been playing with our drummer since I was basically fifteen.

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We heart the i(heart)music festival: Centretown Cripplers

Written

apartment613

on Thursday, August 26, 2010

centretown-cripplers-photo-cred-ming-wu

Post by Gloria Song

The i(heart)music festival begins today(!) and runs until Saturday. Run by Matthew Pollesel, the creative force behind one of Canada’s most popular music blogs (check out our interview with Mathew from last year), the festival has become one of Ottawa’s best showcases for Canadian indie music. This year, with over half of the bands being from the city - including Giant Hand and Amos the Transparent - the festival promises to be an exciting celebration of the Ottawa music scene. From now until Thursday we will be featuring a different Ottawa band that will be playing at the festival.

Although their website lists at least twelve band members, in reality Centretown Cripplers has now toned it down to seven members. Which sounds a lot smaller, but if you’re talking about a garage rock band, that’s still a staggering number of people. With this many bodies, it could turn out either really awful or really awesome. Fortunately for Centretown Cripplers, it’s the latter.

Make no mistake; as other critics have noted, despite its size Centretown Cripplers is not part of that new wave of large sized indie bands like Broken Social Scene, the Burning Hell, or Hamilton Trading Co. It’s a straight up garage punk band with seven members. That kind of sound doesn’t normally seem to require that many bodies, but it works. With a sound that is a curious simultaneous mix of angsty yelling and fun partying, every song pumps out the raw unpretentious unabashed energy of punk bands like the Dead Kennedys, Bikini Kill or Les Breastfeeders.

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Weekend roundup: Events and things to do in Ottawa!

Written

Karen

on Thursday, August 26, 2010

Photo courtesy -Marlith- on Flickr.

It’s about time we had a sunny, sunny weekend - good thing there are plenty of outdoor activities to keep us all occupied in the great outdoors for the duration of this one!

First off, it’s the grand old WakeFest all weekend long - and this festival isn’t like the other summer celebrations. Rather than focusing on just one specialty, they’ve got it all: music, film, visual arts, theatre and literature. The best part? Many of these events will take place on their infamous covered bridge - including the Great Granny Concert and Fundraiser.

The Market will also see a few good festivals happening: the i(heart)music festival will be hosted at Mavericks, while the Lowertown Summer Festival kicks off its inaugural street party this Saturday. The sunshine will especially bode well for Capital Pride Week, as they’ve got tons of events scheduled:

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Lowertown Summer Festival: Bringing the community together since 2010

Written

Francois

on Thursday, August 26, 2010

Photo courtesy of fieldtripp on Flickr.

Jan-François Grabowiecki is one of those Ottawans that left town to go to school but eventually came back. He’s been living in Lowertown for the last couple of years and has seen the place neighborhood go through some interesting changes. “The area between St. Patrick and St. Andrew’s has been gentrifying - with both good and negative consequences, that’s true - but I really love that many cool businesses have settled here, things with style and culture, and thought we should celebrate our neighborhood.”

And thus, he began a quest to put together the first Lowertown Summer Festival. His goal at first was to organize a street sale that would involve closing down part of Dalhousie St. While the local businesses and the Lowertown Community Association were supportive of the project, bigger businesses in the Market weren’t so keen on the idea of having one of the major arteries blocked off for a day. In addition, the construction on Sussex Drive made the city’s Transportation and Safety Committee cautious about the project and eventually suggested to start with something smaller.

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We heart the i(heart)music festival: Loon Choir

Written

apartment613

on Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Loon Choir Post by Gloria Song

The i(heart)music festival begins this Thursday, August 26, and runs until Saturday. Run by Matthew Pollesel, the creative force behind one of Canada’s most popular music blogs (check out our interview with Mathew from last year), the festival has become one of Ottawa’s best showcases for Canadian indie music. This year, with over half of the bands being from the city - including Giant Hand and Amos the Transparent - the festival promises to be an exciting celebration of the Ottawa music scene. From now until Thursday we will be featuring a different Ottawa band that will be playing at the festival.

Born in February 2009 out of a number of other music project, Loon Choir is still a relatively new band. They are still in the process of carving out their place in the music community. Just recently four of the band members traveled to the East Coast on what they called a “networking project”, busking on the streets, playing open mics, placing CDs in music stores, just to get their name known and make valuable contacts while there. Given their upcoming show at the i(heart) music festival organized by Matthew Pollesel with bands like the Most Serene Republic, it looks like their networking is beginning to pay off.

Their first studio album, “Expansion Forces” released in May 2010 was recorded in a couple of people’s houses, including Rolf Klausener of the Acorn. The album was produced with the help of James Bunton from Ohbijou and mastered by Ryan Mills. Singer and guitarist Derek Atkinson cites everything from jazz to bluegrass to hip hop to avant-garde music as the band’s influences. “But at the same time,” he notes, “I’m not trying to trick people into thinking that we’re making crazy jazz-core music or anything like that. It’s pretty straight up dance-rock with folk influences…”

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We heart the i(heart)music festival: Old Crowns

Written

apartment613

on Tuesday, August 24, 2010

ocrowngood

Post by Gloria Song

Today we have “stoner country” band Old Crowns. Since Apartment613 interviewed the band a few months ago, they’ve kept themselves quite busy, touring in Southern Ontario with musician Brett Caswell, and releasing the vinyl edition of their new album.

Fronted by Steve St. Pierre, Old Crowns joins the new crop of musicians like Kathleen Edwards, Adam Puddington, and Proof of Ghosts, returning to the introspective songwriter tradition. They have the chilled out reflective country-tinged narrative style of a male Lucinda Williams, combined with memorable lyrics like “I’m getting drunk like a sailor, I’m getting stoned with your wife.” They released their self-titled debut album in April 2010, recorded by themselves and mastered by the legendary Ryan Mills. They also re-released the album on vinyl in June, and indeed, the warm sound of vinyl seems to be the perfect medium for a band like Old Crowns.

They look forward to playing with other Ottawa bands at the upcoming festival, as they have grown quite at home in the Ottawa music scene. “It seems a lot less cut-throat than other cities seem to be,” commented Sam Seguin, one of the guitarists and backing vocalists for the band. “It’s a good sense of community. The Love Machine, Amos, and Oceans, we’re all buds and we share musicians now and then. Everyone is definitely supportive of each other.”

This applies to i(heart)music organizer Matthew Pollesel as well. “Matt’s got a great head in the Ottawa music scene,” said Sam. “He knows what’s going on and what’s what…He’s really supportive.”

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