Lee Ranaldo on the new Magik Markers record
 

Just found this video...
http://pitchforkmedia.imeem.com/vide...magik_markers/

From the sound samples in the video it's pretty clear that it's going to be completely different as their previous work. No doubt it's going to surprise a lot of people... it surely surprised me!

Could't find this video on the Ecstatic Peace site yet, but no doubt it will be posted on there soon as well.

holy hell they did a 180.

definitely!
Because it was on Pitchfork I didn't realise it was one of Andrew Kesin's Ecstatic Peace videos at first so when I opened it and Lee started talking I was like "Why the hell are they playing this acousticy singer/songwriter stuff in the background on a video about Magik Markers!?!?" before realising it was actually them! :D

holy shit!!!!!!!!!!1

that 2nd song (is that them???) reminds me of nico

fucking a, lee picking up on elisa/patti smith raw lyrical energy yes!!!

anyway fucking great news thank you.

finally, something to fucking listen to

now they call it yes wave:

http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/artist.php?id=5

ha ha ha. hipster marketers crack me up. they are no different than mainstream ones, just a little more esoteric in their vocabulary.

thanks for the link.
music in the back sounds great by the way.

September is going to be a great month for Ecstatic Peace. I wonder if Lee plays on the album as he did with the Wooden Wand he produced.

i hope so, and if he does, that record might totally blow me away. here's hoping...

Those two songs in the background sound great. Can't wait to hear more. Thanks.

I've never bothered with this band before, but i loved those two tracks in the background. The album should be great.

lee on magick markers recording.. is he really that desperate for cash?

ECSTATIC PEACE presents:
Magik Markers "BOSS"
Release date: September 25, 2007


"...It is like walking around with a gun in your pocket. Know what I mean? You have to be a gentle dude. When you have the energy of the universe burning through your meat, you have to be killer gentle because you know that you can explode at any time; you can take care of anything on any level and be so intense that people would just be blown back from you. So you have to be cool; it's like Superman walking around." - Rob Tyner, 1969

 

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?...' "

The Magik Markers are there.

 

Magik Markers "BOSS"


1. Axis Mundi
2. Body Rot
3. Last of the Lemach Line
4. Empty Bottles
5. Taste
6. Four/The Ballad of Harry Angstrom
7. Pat Garrett
8. Bad Dream/Hartford's Beat Suite
9. Circle

Elisa Ambrogio: Lead Guitar, Vocals
Pete Nolan: Drums, Guitar, Piano, Electronics, Vocals

Lee Ranaldo: Guitar on 1,2,6 and Glokenspiel, 4

All music and lyrics by Magik Markers, except Lee's glokenspiel part, that was totally his!

Produced by Lee Ranaldo
Recorded and Mixed by Lee Ranaldo and Aaron Mullan at Echo Canyon West
Hoboken, NJ Spring 2007
Mastered by Sarah Register at the Lodge

2007 ecstatic peace all rights reserved

what i feel bad about it is this: i find the magick markers chicks pretty attractive, and i'd probably love to date at least one of them at some point. but their music is embarassing and infantile. but i haven't listened to the new shit yet, and i always listen to bands even i don't like in case they surprise me. so i'll give this a listen and reserve judgement till then..

The new stuff sounds pretty classic rock-ish. I hope it's a decent record but so far it sounds a lot like mellower side of Royal Trux or something. Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose.

I'm just glad to hear that they're finally being productive. Everything that I heard previously has been noise wank which always got the "they have the attitude right but..." from me. I look forward to hearing these "songs."

Huh.
I'm interested to see what this sounds like, and what any future shows might sound like as well.
I can see how some longtime fans might see this as some sort of dilution, but I think it shows that they can do something more, which is nice to know. Like it or hate it, I do think their "old style" had a limited shelf-life and would eventually wind up eating its own tail like we have seen in the past, and it's good to see some multidimensionality emerge here. Might just shut some hater mouths.

i should listen to this later...i wanted them to go more in the direction they started heading with road pussy.

I agree, I just wasn't that taken with what I've heard so far. Reserve judgement when I hear the whole thing I suppose. I wasn't really a fan of theirs especially. I got the latitudes cd they did recently and I think it's fucking ace but a lot of stuff I think is a bit crummy. I guess that's going to be the case with that kind of method of playing. It's good that they are not afraid to do more song based stuff, I just hope they can convey their energy. From the clips so far, the vocals sound completely different. I would have liked a bit more of the rawness in the vocals especially.

It's the rawness and energy what I most like about them as well, so I don't know whether I'm going to like this new direction. I'm not a huge Magik Markers fan, but the surprise of what they're doing now makes this suddenly an album to really look forward to. I'm curious.

http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/artist.php?id=5

July 4th!!! 2007
Straight from the Markers! ....
On the cd that comes with the June/July issue of McSweeney's The Believer the Markers have a weird version of Body Rot from the Ranaldo Sessions. Celebrate Independence Day by buying it!

link for the believer: HERE!
hope yur fireworks dint blow yur bro's eye/hand off. live free or die.......hard baby! AMERICA.
Ecstatic Peace!

to celebrate independance day, i posted a new scissor shock song called calculus, another fucking lie. it has a mandolin.