Magik Markers - Balf Quarry

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Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

5...according to our Brett on Wed 29 Apr, 2009.

Hey, do you think that this new Magik Markers LP is the first album to have Le Palais Ideal featuring in the artwork? If so it's about time it got immortalised in rock and fitting that the release to do the honours is a total beauty, hands down the best thing I've heard them do. While I'm sure they were never too fussed about always being compared to one of the best bands ever I think they've found their own little niche away from the Sonic Youth thing on Balf Quarry with the mixture of overloaded hardcore thrashers, plaintive (often piano inflected) ballads, long droney passages and ace blues workouts. The bluesy ones are probably best represented by 'Don't Talk in Your Sleep', one of the best tunes I've heard in ages, somewhere between Royal Trux and the Stones' 'Ventilator Blues' with paranoia to spare while '7/23' represents the more reflective side with Ben Chasny joining in the fun, coming off like a gnarled Young Marble Giants inside a broken TV with Moondog on percussion. Great songwriting, experimentation that serves the material and an increased emphasis on the intriguing, evocative lyrics all combine to make a varied, fully formed and consistently excellent album I'll be digging into for a long while to come. Ace shit on CD and LP via the good people at Drag City.

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· Working with engineer Scott Colburn (Sun City
Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard
Bishop), Magik Markers have captured a lot of
different moods and twitches on ‘Balf Quarry’.
· Tremoring mid-rhythms form the body, with a
couple of showers of hardcore, high flying freeduo
style and several clinking music boxes of woe
as well. On slower tunes, the mass of brooding
guitar tone generated is Elisa Ambrogio’s
signature, a carving all of her own.
· Fills, licks and other touches move the songs a
broken-arm’s length away from a fundament of
chaos and horror. Elisa Ambrogio and Pete
Nolan are locked together, beating it out, feeling
the sound of their earth quake. And slicing
through all the atmosphere, Elisa’s voice is a
spear of light, splashes of mud, an acid
purple flashback.

Risperdal * Don't Talk In Your Sleep * Jerks * Psychosomatic *
7/23 * State Numbers * The Ricercar Of Dr Clara Haber *
The Lighter Side Of... Hippies * Ohio R/Live/Hoosier * Shells