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.

One-sided LP documenting the infamous face-gouging gig that Magik Markers played in Tienen, Belgium, May 9th 2005, this time totally remastered and sonically fucked-with by Dominik Fernow of Prurient to give it an extra sick veneer. It sounds incredible and might just be the most purely in-yr-face Markers release to date - “total slow motion noise dirge hell”. Beautiful heavy duty silkscreened double sided/wraparound sleeve. Highest recommendation.

Huge walls of psych guitar imbalance from a trio who know how to chew an axe: Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers, Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance and Brian Sullivan of Mouthus. Miasmic destructo-rock moves in a derelict post-Dead C style. Pressed on 180 g vinyl and housed in classy wraparound silkscreened sleeve by Alan Sherry of SIWA. The LP also comes with a pressed CD featuring bonus jams from the same session. Edition of 845 copies.

Great 12” EP from Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk, here with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth on drums, Peter Meehan on guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) on bass. In many ways this is the apotheosis of Nolan’s recent work which has been moving towards an hallucinatory synthesis of basement rock and chiming west coast folk, somewhere between the Paisley Underground sound and a pre-Sweetheart Byrds. Four tracks that have an ecstatic garage band feel complete with submerged/spaced vocals that float across the tracks in clouds of reverb and some almost Rallizes-esque soloing: “Pete Nolan was Spectre Folk before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be Spectre Folk long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you’re dead, and while you’re alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Michigander Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) runs drums, Peter Meehan (The Grey Lady) glues guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) slithers bass, creating an alchemy the Spectre hasn’t floated since the days of basement wig-wearing in the short-lived Norman Bates era. The band entered Echo Canyon West with the intention of recording a 7-inch of the up-tempo version of “The Blackest Medicine,” the title cut from the 2007 home-fi Woodsist debut. After several sessions, they emerged with a four-song studio collage monster that won’t fit in your locker and smells like smoked banana peels and undies blowing down an alleyway. A vibraphone, piano, and a plate reverb unit the size of a Brooklyn apartment were all employed by the Spectre like Uri Gellar used spoons—inappropriately, desperate and bent. They physically turned the two-inch reel of tape over so Meehan could put subliminal backwards masking under his Erkin-Koray-worthy guitar solo on “Fourth Dimension Refs,” and Nolan put the Temple Screamer to good use on tracks one and two, using samples of Shirley Temple Black’s “Good Ship Lollipop” as vocoder harmonies on choruses. Oh yeah, it’s full of burning psych-pop jammers, too!  Earmarking Nolan’s longstanding but unspoken obsession with personal hygiene, “Keep Your Teeth Clean!” is a krauty suite that betrays Shelley’s and Mullan’s recent stint as the rhythm section for Neu! Their teutonic influence has the effect of putting the dreamy psych-fuzz exhibited on last year’s Compass LP through a blender… with a frog... that spills out into a wide open Milky Way head zone. You can’t snuggle with this record, so strap yourself in and feel the Gs! Fearless as a lemming, Nolan has created a private universe here, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let’s have a drift.” - Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers)

Totally beautiful psychedelic fuzz monster from this Montana duo that features Bryan Ramirez, John Olson of Wolf Eyes’ old sparring partner in Universal Indians, Plants et al. Limited edition with full-colour art from Maya Miller of Double Leopards in the usual suave Heavy Tapes style.