Where to be this weekend

The Paramedics have a finely honed sense of emergency. It comes across on III, their first release which is full of atmospheric rock with an experimental edge.

The Ottawa band comprises Jordan Allan (guitars, drums, effects), Allan Gauthier (guitar, percussion), Luke Duross (bass), and Jamie Kronick (drums). Kronick does double duty as the band’s photographer (he took the photo, above) and is honing his craft at the School of Photographic Arts in Ottawa.

Gauthier takes a step away from his role in the city’s premier pop act The Love Machine to unleash his darker side with The Paramedics. Duross, meanwhile, did a turn in Relief Maps, a band that puts urban malaise to song. The album’s wall-of-sound production quality comes from studio whizzes Jonathan Chandler and Jason Fee.

“We’re striving for the live show to be very intense and dynamic. Our loud is very loud and our quiet is very quiet,” Kronick says.

Download a free track here and see them with The Paint Movement and The Love Machine. $10. 9:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 22. Babylon, 317 Bank St.

Watters’ Wattage

The sibling duo of Muddy and Danny get stronger with every album. Their latest — Rock and Roll Mansion — combines dirty rock riffs, a bluesy edge, and a few pop salutes. In other words, the stuff of good times, which is the message the Ottawa duo likes to convey in songs such as Life Is a Gas and Seize the Day. The tune Synthesizer City is worth searching out. $7 adv. 8:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 21. Black Sheep Inn, 753 Riverside Dr., Wakefield.

Elsewhere out there

More atmospheric rock from the Goodluck Assembly (formerly Sojourn), as the Ottawa four-piece releases it latest, Glowscape. Thursday, Jan.  21. Live Lounge.

Jazz, hip-hop and electronic music meet in Halabisky’s Uprising, led by capital city economist and horn player Dave Halabisky. Saturday, Jan. 22. Café Dekcuf.

Sound Seekers is published weekly at OttawaMagazine.com. Read Fateema Sayani’s culture column in Ottawa Magazine. Subscribe to the print edition here.