Sound Seekers by Fateema Sayani is published weekly at OttawaMagazine.com. Read Fateema Sayani’s culture column in Ottawa Magazine and follow her on Twitter @fateemasayani.
New Video
Pop artist Dann Oickle (formerly of Ottawa, now domiciled in Montreal), released his new album Blitzkrieg earlier this year. It’s a reflection on the idea of love as an act of war from tiny inequities to fallings out to near-fatal attractions, as we wrote in a previous Sound Seekers post.
Oickle is a performer who loves imagery. He organizes his live shows with Bowie-esque ambition for make-up and moves. His gigs are prefaced by what feels like a well-executed marketing plan, replete with vivid visuals that stand out in our image-saturated culture.
Continuing in that vein, Oickle hopes to release a video for each track of his new album. The first is for “The Bed,” an audience favourite from the album.
“People liked the Madonna/Prince vibe of it, and the pulsing sexuality,” Oickle says. “It was also noted that this song maintained an erotic vibe and yet never crossed over to the crass or perverse.”
He brought that sensual, couth vibe to the video setting, which takes place in the hotel room of a landed sailor (played by Oickle) and two call girls (played by Olexandra Pruchnicky and Rebecca Noelle of The Peptides).
“It’s a sticky summer day, we were envisioning the Pacific somewhere,” Oickle says (real location: Gilmour Inn, Centretown). “Playing off the idea of love as an act of war and using the Second World War imagery from the album cover artwork, we decided to invite the viewer into the past. It’s a world of expectations, closeted gays, lesbian freedom, isolation, and time.”
Oickle says the video, shot by Bonnie Findley, a member of Oickle’s Torrid Productions collective, is meant to feel like a moment in time with whiffs of forbidden desire.
See Oickle in Ottawa on May 11 at The Rainbow Bistro.
More Music
Were you a fan of 1990s-era label Merge Records (Superchunk, Lambchop, Red Kross, Teenage Fanclub)? The label turns 25 this year and a bunch of Ottawa artists, including Ben Wilson, Christine Chesser, and Chris Page, paid tribute to the label with a covers album. Stream the album below or click here to download all 15 tracks.
Best Bets in Ottawa this Weekend
No Kinds of Love, the Velvet Underground cover band, plays at the re-opening of the Orange Gallery in its new location in the City Centre complex on Thursday.
It’s a night of triple-bill electro Thursday at Pressed with Phedre, Boyhood, and Ken Park playing beats a-plenty. The show is part of the Arboretum Festival series.
Teenage Kicks plays Pressed Café on Saturday. The Toronto band will release a new album, Spoils of Youth, later this month.
The band Monogrenade’s new album, Composite, features the work of French horn player Pietro Amato (The Luyas, Arcade Fire) and the string quartet Mommies on the Run (Patrick Watson). See the band at Le Petit Chicago on Saturday.
Cloud of Rock, featuring Ottawa rock scene stalwarts Tim DeVries, Dave Bignell, Fred Guignon, Peter Von Althen, Mike Fenton and Don Cummings, plays Irene’s Pub every Sunday night in April. No cover.