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Magik Markers, "Red Tour 2006"
On this three-track food/petrol/strings funding release the band continue their rock and roll d/evolution. What the Markers do maybe easy to flippantly sum up, but it’s spat out as complex improvisational process. This trio take the roots of musical cultures, personal experience and labels and feed them with a row of cocktail shots and composted Ginsberg instead of the same old generic watery rock moves. The thing about Magik Markers is that while they refuse to stick the tried and tested templates, they are happy to batter new life into traditional trio instrumentation.
At the center of everything, or sometimes central in a lost on the prairie outskirts kind of way, are Elisa Ambrogio’s vocals and lyrics. Her indolent NY blues on the second track might as well be from a different person when compared with the end of the bar moan on "three." Sometime timorously soft and hesitant and other times like a hell bound Jim/Kim hybrid (Morrison and Gordon), the word association and left side of the head pick-and-mix need multiple flybys to get the whole thing. Throughout this third track there’s a bulge and squawk groan from a grating wheel of sound caught in the sparking firework of guitar noise. This sap-thick take on rock and roll creaks its way into a wheezy live loop before taking off for a short nose dive flight; protest music against formality and form.
Despite the sometimes-harsh nature of dissent the opener here is a beautiful piece of coming together chemistry. It’s like I’m suddenly the unseen presence in a pre soundcheck jam that quickly flowers into something more fragile and gorgeous than the most carefully sculpted song. The centrifugal piano seems to be miced up from the next room as a laid-back guitar and lone female lullaby slip slowly into perfect post sex sync. Snatches of melody come like the whole affair is being blown from across some smoky water. Everything seems abstracted and one step removed, even its unconscious move into confusion, beat rant confusion and spluttering squall has an air of liberated elegance.
This sense of freedom is also apparent in the lethargic blues of "Two" where Leah Quimby’s bass begins to fill the gaps note by precious note. The drums might be a little overstated, but Quimby seems to be on her own path putting delicious musical flesh to bone.
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