Either you’re with them or against them, but you are definitely not of them. Like a ponzi scheme of high-decibel proportions or brave new leaders of the fre(ak) world, Magik Markers are preaching to those who want to listen, and not looking for any converts.
Even now, when they play through preconceived riffs and the tell-tale vocal melodies that seem burned inside Elisa Ambrogio’s four-track mind (32-track?), they’re delivered in the loosest gestures towards structure, accompanied by Pete Nolan’s scrambling game of catch-up, hold-it-together then break-it-apart percussion. Maybe there is a hint of reaching across the aisles her, though. When the pair played after Thurston Moore’s Bark Haze at Silent Barn a couple years ago, on the eve of the release of Boss, their approach (at least the one that’s left an impression), while largely the same, hinged more on the improvised, strung out, and instinctual. Then Lee Ranaldo helped them produce a comparatively glistening series of rock songs (Boss), and here we have a strange sales pitch: noise freak-out and song-scalping in one disharmonius unit. Who’s to say if they aren’t forcing something novel, blurry and unquanitifable into the sound world.
