Connecticut:
Magik Markers
CITY: Hartford
SONGS THAT GOT US: "Don't Talk in Your Sleep"; "7/23"
ON THE TUBES: MySpace, Web site, YouTube
RECORD LABELS: Drag City, Arbitrary Signs, Ecstatic Peace
WHY THEM? Discussing “guitar politics” in an interview, Elisa Ambrogio stated her inspiration in the form of a question: “What if you played guitar the way a girl jerks off?” We’ve often wondered the same thing. (See here for her rhetorical question followed immediately by a performance that provides the answer.) Once a trio, now a duo, Ambrogio and drummer Pete Nolan deal in skillfully dissonant, distorted guitars and nearly spoken-word female vocals that vacillate wildly between smoldering apathy and simmering fury. That’s an oversimplification, though, because their latest, Balf Quarry, shows some real versatility, like in the toy-keyboard drones of “Psychosomatic” or the piano-heavy storm of “State Numbers.”
BONUS BIT! Though they’re now based in Brooklyn, New York, the Markers have drawn clear paths to their Connecticut roots in such album titles as Balf Quarry, which is the name of a trap-rock mine outside Hartford
