Excellent quality archival live recordings of the classic trio line-up of Magik Markers – Elisa Ambrogio, Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby – recorded in Baltimore in 2003. Never got to see this line-up of the band as much as I would have liked to as they were a ferocious and unpredictable spectacle every night. Here they’re playing at some kind of tortuously down-tuned peak, with blunt guitars steamrolled by Nolan’s drums and Elisa’s inspired stream-of-consciousness performance style channeling Patti Smith as much as Lydia Lunch. Comes in the usual hand-screened envelopes.

“Balf Quarry, an old stone pit just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, represents a central place for Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan, the duo who call themselves Magik Markers, and is the apt title of their forthcoming May Drag City release. Unearthed from the mines of Connecticut in 2001, Magik Markers have been brutalizing audiences with their shattering live appearances and recordings since the first part of this century. They are now living and creating on opposite sides of the country. Elisa Ambrogio recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco and Pete Nolan resides in Brooklyn, but they came together in Elisa's new city to record Balf Quarry with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard Bishop). Balf Quarry has moody space in its soul, and on this album you'll find Elisa and Pete locked together, beating it out, listening to and feeling the sound of their earth quake. And slicing through all the atmosphere, Elisa's voice is a spear of light, splashes of mud, and an acid purple flashback. Listening to Balf Quarry is like immersing yourself in a great horror film, complete with mental dissipation, catharsis for the ears, and the most satisfying psychotic listening experience you'll have this year.” – DC.

“Balf Quarry, an old stone pit just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, represents a central place for Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan, the duo who call themselves Magik Markers, and is the apt title of their forthcoming May Drag City release. Unearthed from the mines of Connecticut in 2001, Magik Markers have been brutalizing audiences with their shattering live appearances and recordings since the first part of this century. They are now living and creating on opposite sides of the country. Elisa Ambrogio recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco and Pete Nolan resides in Brooklyn, but they came together in Elisa's new city to record Balf Quarry with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard Bishop). Balf Quarry has moody space in its soul, and on this album you'll find Elisa and Pete locked together, beating it out, listening to and feeling the sound of their earth quake. And slicing through all the atmosphere, Elisa's voice is a spear of light, splashes of mud, and an acid purple flashback. Listening to Balf Quarry is like immersing yourself in a great horror film, complete with mental dissipation, catharsis for the ears, and the most satisfying psychotic listening experience you'll have this year.” – DC.

New acid drone drenched CD-R from Pete Nolan of Magik Markers, GHQ et. al. on his own label. First release of Spectre Folk's new "band" phase. "This CDR explores new sonic possibilities of home 16 track technology and early formation of the new band phase of Spectre Folk as Pete is joined by J.T. Sodas on synth. A few songs, new and old, are given the Band treatment. Thers also some very glopy stuff and some extendo blooz stuff, as well as some solo synth action. A long disc full of dripping mind exploration.." - Arbitrary Signs.

New limited self-released album from Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk project, with a bunch of weird styles, running from a nice, reverent cover versions of The Velvet Underground’s “Ride Into The Sun” through goofy electro, spidery wah-wah guitar blow-outs and a full band jam featuring Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra, Julie Tomlinson and John Truscinski. Comes in the usual screened envelopes.

Major new split single with a classic whirlwind raga from Vibracathedral Orchestra and two tracks from Barry Dean’s UK psych project, joined on the first track by Mick Flower of Vibracathedral on guitar and organ and Pete Nolan of Magik Markers on drums.

Limited self-released LP, the first ever full length vinyl from Pete Nolan of Magik Markers’ solo project, Spectre Folk. Pete plays electric and acoustic guitar, drums, Juno 12, tapes and sings. The feel is of downer acid rock broadcast through a fog of low-res tape, with modal guitar stylings and padding drums that would reconcile Neil Haggerty, David Roback and Jakob Olausson. Some of the tracks almost have a Twisted Village plays Neil Young’s Harvest LP feel, with a stoned, slow-motion aspect that feels like staring straight into the sun. A blinder.

Brand new deluxe limited edition self-released vinyl version of the Ecstatic Peace CD, with new silkscreened jackets, inserts and a full colour poster. "When confronted with an example of magnificence in nature, such as a waterfall, Jane Goodall reported that the chimpanzees she observed were captivated, as if in awe of the beauty of the world. On BOSS, the Magik Markers have tried to capture the chimps' awe. A formality and restraint the Markers have never exerted on their previous recorded material is present on BOSS. Now the Markers are Jainists, with their mouths masked so as to not inhale even one tiny insect, here pursuing the killer gentle with a vengeance. Recorded in the cavernous dark of Echo Canyon West, with producer Lee Ranaldo working the boards like a diviner, BOSS documents the Markers with a previously unheard fidelity and orchestration. Idiosyncratic song structure and melodies interspersed with a destructive drum stomp are reminiscent of the early electrified blues of Junior Kimbrough, or the black hole rhythms of Kousokuya. Mixing a gentle vulnerability with a winded egomania, the Markers have always had a musical tunnel vision; BOSS is that vision made manifest. The tug of war the Markers enact, the way they are fully prepared to start yanking their world apart as they find themselves losing their place in, makes moot possibilities of greatness or mediocrity. It makes them unapologetic soothsayers with their ears pressed to the ground, waiting for footsteps. With Peter Nolan, we finally hear what Lou Reed would have sounded like had he sallied with the drums instead of getting seduced by the easy praise of front man status. Like Rashid Ali squeezed into the Teutonic leather pants of Faust, Nolan drums like there are hell hounds at his heels but he just can't be bothered. Here both laconic and frenzied, Nolan's drumming arms reach out like an octopus's: tickling the ivories, humming the organ and blasting taps on some kind of endtime trumpet. As a pianist, Nolan reminds us that the piano is a percussive, beating out the whoomp of some old war dance, a bare foot-fall rhythm of fighters to battle and the heavy hands of a whiskey burlesque in the afternoon. Nolan is easy to underestimate, but finally, here is high fidelity record of the strange soul of one of America's most natural and quizzical musical minds. In a 2005 interview in The Wire, Elisa Ambrogio said, "I want [The Magik Markers] to concentrate on music and focus inward, to concentrate on our own language of sound." BOSS stands as the Markers' first stab at getting to the meat of this ambition. Ambrogio is not easy to categorize. Nose deep in New England Calvinism and the brutality of nature, Ambrogio's lyrics are like a transcription of a drunk lunchtime argument between Lisa Yuskavage and Herman Melville. A guitarist whose notes form question and hatchet marks with equal measure, a musical humility to the point of ingratiation fused with all visible seams to grandiose self-importance speeds through her playing. With a mix of blues simplicity, an almost Sonny Sharrock wailing and a janky Americana punk reminiscent of Pat Place and Roky Erickson, Ambrogio avoids preciousness like a rash. On BOSS, a tent rises right out of the empty plain and we are thrust into a full blown revival show with no audience and no lights; it is just Elisa preaching, Pete blowing Gabriel's horn, and the mad wind of the prairie blowing all around. Fairfield Porter wrote that: 'Art does not succeed by compelling you to like it, but by making you feel this presence in it. 'Is someone there?...'" - EP.

“A new set of studio recordings from the latter day version of the A Band. As noted in previous musings (check out David Keenan's article on The Wire site) on this collective, the A Band follows in the tradition of the People Band, Scratch Orchestra, and Portsmouth Sinfonia (and oddly enough, Calgary's own Street of Crocodiles), ditching traditional notions of instrumentation and ability for a more disparate and unique flow of ideas and sounds. Standard instruments (piano, clarinet, electric guitar) sit alongside makeshift/found percussion, weird electronics, and vocal utterances, the elements shifting in and out of focus, often seeming as if players are walking in and out of the studio at their leisure, adding something then moving along. The first track is largely acoustic, featuring a swirling marriage of its rag-tag odd and ends, while the second main track (actually the third) features a much different feel and heavier usage of electric sounds. Totally bizarre, singular, and unlike anything else on Bug Incision. Treated white card sleeves with colour & b&w stick-on art, edition of 119.” – BI. 

New album featuring alchemically re-worked live and studio jams from Neil Campbell (A-Band/Vibracathedral Orchestra et al). Lucid electronic minimalism combines with a feel for elaborate technicolour architectures, illuminated circuitry and the application of ritualised trance moves to punk primitive drones for a series of gorgeous psychedelic constructs. The sister album to the vinyl only Super Grease, also on Important.

New duo punk magic from these two UK underground stalwarts central to the whole Vibracathedral Orchestra/A-Band axis. Uncut 8" lathe in an edition of 150 hand-numbered copies, part of Alt Vinyl's new lathe-only series. Featuring John Olson (Wolf Eyes) as MC on side 1.

New limited edition vinyl LP from the post-Neil Campbell line-up of Vibracathedral Orchestra in a hand-numbered edition of 600 copies on Sunburned Hand Of The Man's own private press label. Recorded live in London and Cambridge on the 26th and 27th of August 2007, this one features the line-up of Michael Flower, Adam Davenport, John Godbert, Bridget Hayden and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors). Advance word on this album was pretty wild but it more than lives up to the hype, functioning as one of the all-time best Vibra sides and showcasing alla their advanced drone/psych strategies to dazzling effect. The sound is beautifully primitive, running from deformed wordless ragas that explode in arc after arc of heavy atonal stasis through the kind of amazing six string ostrich guitar work from Flower that would hallucinate whole freak out tracks assembled from nothing but Lou Reed's blistering avant-frat style circa European Son/Run Run Run/All Tomorrow's Parties. The fidelity gives it the same feel of raw devotional music that colours much of the back catalogues of The Skaters and Matthew Bower but this is more rock inflected and self-consciously 'classic' than either of those two, effectively re-formulating hypnotic guitar rock as *the* ticket to the other side. The drone pieces feel like waves of razor blades, the rockers like every freeform guitar fantasy you ever formulated and the whole thing is threaded with weird, inexplicable bird calls that gives the otherwise claustrophobic guitar environments a beautiful shot of light. An immaculate album, highly recommended. Welcome the fuck back.

Debut release by the duo of Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club/Vibracathedral Orchestra) and Paul ‘Nonnen’ Walsh, originally one-half of the legendary Smell & Quim. This is psychedelic electro-punk that has plenty of squelchy analog appeal. There are extended detours into blizzard-tunnels of hi-fi wipe-out and full-on noise usurped by weird, kiddy keyboard patterns. Really strange, lucid DIY electro jams that have one foot firmly in the whole UK Snatch Tapes/DIY zone and another in post-Noise timbres. Live two-track jams, 10 tracks.

Edition of 80 copies CD-R from Bridget Hayden of Vibracathedral Orchestra/Telescopes et al. Recorded while on tour with Marcia Bassett (Zaimph/Hototogisu et al) in November 2008, the set sounds very much influenced by Bassett, particularly her work in Zaika with Tom Carter (Charalambides). Hayden sings and plays overdriven electric guitar with a slide, combining hovering fuzz drones with travelling steel in a pugilistic Industrial-blues style. 

Limited edition LP, second in a series of three releases from the reformulated Vibracathedral Orchestra featuring Mick Flower and Adam Davenport alongside John Godbert (aka Herb Diamante) and John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man. The Secret Base features three long tracks, the first a classic hovering Japan banjo séance that jump-cuts straight into a void of tortured string and ritualistic percussion. The second piece has a kind of lolloping caveman plays the first folk music groove that could almost pass for a more pastoral Faust while the third track is an epic side-long mantra scored for resonant metal percussion and throatfuls of drone. Recommended. 

Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies 3” CD-R, part of La Station Radar’s ‘Fake Tape Series’.  More electro-raunch from the duo of Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club et al) and Paul Walsh, recorded live at Batley swimming baths in July of 2009. Aggressively nuanced electronics that combine chuffing rhythms with hotwired crackle and amorphous bass tones. Somewhere between the more ‘Industrial’ stylings of early Kluster/Conrad Schnitzler and Astral Social Club?

New compilation from one of the most consistently wowing UK underground labels, with exclusive tracks from Harappian Night Recordings, Shiggajon, Pekko Kappi, Ross Parfitt, Helhesten, Serfs, The Navigators, Stephanie Hladowski, Plum State, Ben Nash, A Wake, Infinite Light, Dylan Nyoukis, U Boat, BAO, Christine Sehnaoui and Alberorovesciato. Artwork by Dylan Nyoukis. Recommended.

Self-released hand-numbered edition of 100 copies, with an audio collage of a 2008 Birmingham show, a blow-out from Mick Flower’s house, a London gig and a set from Greenfield, MA. Features a buncha heads: Moloney, Thomas, Schneiderman, Sarah O' Shea, Paul Labrecque, Mick Flower, Conrad Capistran, Phil Franklin, Taylor Richardson, and Adam Nodelman (Borbetomagus).

Much-anticipated issue of both sets from Sterling Smith’s performance with Chris Corsano and Mick Flower at The Cube in Bristol on May 17^th 2006. Both sets have an odd compulsive energy which is almost at odds with the characters of the players involved. Corsano seems to be more ‘inside’ the tracks than really propelling them, knocking them sideways and subtly deforming them while Flower’s playing is more in the pulse style that he brings to his work with MV & EE. The second disc is more overtly ‘explosive’, with Flower switching to Japan banjo, and the resultant tangle of strings is beautifully complex. But despite both musicians’ innate iconoclasm, the show is really Sterling’s, commanding the group with a quiet confidence, wrapping his tongue around the lyrics and getting into some cranking guitar breakdowns.

I was gabbing with a pal in the shop this week when I described some group as a ‘poor man’s Flower-Corsano’. My friend was quick to set me straight. Who isn’t a poor man’s Flower-Corsano?, he said. Duh, point taken. This latest limited self-released album, You’ll Never Work In This Town Again, is a continuation of the euphoric form of their previous Chocolate Cities release with three beautifully recorded live tracks from Pittsburgh and NYC in October of 2009. The opening 17-minute explosion sounds like a fleet of berserkers playing amphetamine bagpipe music with all of the end of the world gladness/sadness of the Albert Ayler Orchestra. Mick creates these impossible tangles of steel that are as implosive as any Eurasian ritual music while cutting them up with Jimi-at-Woodstock levels of squeal. But it’s the speed of ideas, the ten-arm dexterity of Corsano, the endlessly mutating riffs, that really blows your mind. The second 19-minute track starts out in more languorous fashion, with Mick playing a spare eulogy that Corsano swiftly marches all the way over the horizon, while the  closing 7 minute piece feels more like a coda, with Mick slowly unwinding a spiral of melody while Corsano dances all around it. Truly, one of the premier energy music duos of this or any other age. Highly recommended. 

“Fantastic set by Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder from the recent UK tour in February 2010 recorded at the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds.  On this one the duo are joined by local resident Mick Flower on bass for the whole set and the Doozer provides blues harp on a couple of tracks.  Whilst this is the same line-up and a similar set as those played in Manchester and Coventry a few days later (captured on recent Heroine releases "(Bad) Blood on the Doozer's Guitar" and "Electric Wharf (Conventrian)") this is well worth checking out as it has quite a different sound: more agressive, bit faster and really good mix on the sonics.  Firstly, this 'bootleg' comes from two composite mixes to get it right and it shows with a much clearer recording than some of the other Heroine releases.  The set opens with "Cold Rain" which sounds sublime this time around; Mick's bass is less distorted, you can hear those melodic bass runs properly this time, and this is clearest I have heard Erika's firebird mandolin and lap steel outside of a spectrasound recording.  About four minutes in MV drops a beautiful solo with single melting notes ringing out, great version.  Next up is "Get Right Church" which is the only performance from the set which does not have such a hard edge.  Instead it is a much more authentic blues rendition which reminds me of the electric blues recordings from Chess Studios circa 1950s.  The Doozer's blues harp is simple 3-note riffs but with effective note bending in the style of Junior Wells or Little Watler, and MV's clean, single note solos sound like Hubert Sumlin.  Midway through MV produces some delicate clean wah-wah reminiscent of Hendrix's "Up from the Skies" before bursting into a fuller onslaught for the song's close.  If the versions of this song from the No Floor Tour were blues rock at their finest, then this version is simply electric blues at its finest.  Dedicated to Jo Ann Kelly who I'm sure would have approved.  "Summer Magic" returns to the more frazzled playing on this set with the opening chords being laden in wah-wah and hammered out relentlessly throughout.  Really like the version of "Environments" on this set of shows with the sitar-sounding meanderings going into waves of raga induced chord-like crescendos which whip up a frenzy.  Sounds a bit like a live take on "Jook Enthusiast", the opening track from the latest COM release "Bollywoe". Finally, a few seconds of fuzz signals the descent from "Environments" into one of the heavier versions of "Canned Happiness" I have heard, even without drums.  Not much canned boogie, only a full-on feedback onslaught just to prove they can melt guitars better than Courtis / Moore, yeah right! Only question remains, did Mick Flower's house feature in the top ten middens? Great sonics.  Highly recommended.” – Andrew Ross