Magik Markers - Balf Quarry
After years of numerous CD-R releases and punishing live shows, Magik Markers release their first album for Drag City Records.
Magik Markers' sonic experimentation continues with this, their first release on guitar-haven label Drag City. Their by now trademarked squalls and groans settle uneasily across dragging expanses of discordant pop. Don't Talk In Your Sleep growls with primal blues-punk urges, as if the true spirit of resistance and debased lust were forced violently together. It plays like a filthy Peaches and Iggy collaboration, though even that comparison doesn't quite do the dirt of Jerks justice. Silence finds a constant place on this album - in contrast with the band's uninhibited, noisy live shows - as blank spaces fill out agonising and unpredictable pauses. Awkward gaps between where the notes should be and where they actually are stretch longingly, covering waves of crunching darkness. Despite leaning heavily upon the influence of the brooding, no-wave Sonic Youth sound, the fuzzy, fulfilling joy of messy guitars and ringing ears justifies repeat listens.