anyone appreciate top-notch retardo-rock?
Clavius Productions presents:
Saturday, March 10
Warehouse Next Door
1021 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousenextdoor.com $8, all ages!
doors at 9, show at 9:30
Magik Markers (no wave insanity, Ecstatic Peace)
Facemat (DC improv psych/noise)
Harrius (from Baltimore, mem. of Metalux, Ehse Records)
Ultimate VAG (DC improv guitar/percussion duo, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)
Magik Markers http://www.myspace.com/themagikmarkers Remember three years ago when that whole "No Wave Resurrection" thing was going on (or at least the media penned it that way)? Remember how none of the bands fingered by the press as being in this New No Wave thing sounded remotely like a vintage No Wave band? How disappointed were you? Well, you can dry your three-year-old eye boogers because Magik Markers are the real deal.
I Trust My Guitar, Etc, the band's first official release after a string of often brilliant CDRs, is a 'primitive' masterwork akin to Half Japanese's
1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts. Lead singer/lone guitarist Elisa Ambrigio assaults her guitar in a style that she likens to a woman masturbating while singing like she's being chased through the Bronx by a pack of police dogs. Elisa is accompanied by Pete Nolan's power drumming and Leah Quimby's low-tuned bass. Side A kicks off with the title track, which is a good introduction to the band before the full-frontal beating that ensues. Elisa finds and manipulates her guitar's clitoris on "Most Beautiful City on Earth," an orgasmic scorcher that showcases the band's knack for fast, punky songs. The rhythm is kept by a two-note bass line by Quimby, which provides Elisa enough room to rub and bend her strings as filler. The only track on the second side of the album, "Straight A's in Love," just so happens to be the highlight of the album. Pete Nolan's trashcan drumming frames the song and gives Leah and Elisa room to explore their sound. Ranging from an atmospheric piece to a punch-you-in-the-balls rave-up, the slow-burner is consistently enveloped in thick layers of sludge. My only problem with the track is my only problem with the album: the fact that it has to end. (Tinymixtapes)
Harrius http://www.myspace.com/metalux This brand new epic by Jenny Gräf Sheppard (of Metalux) and Chiara Giovando (of PCPCG and a bunch of other bands no one's ever heard of) sits quietly for its real audience in the ages. Both an alarmingly intense and hushed "noise" record and totally whacked "songwriter" record, if it needed a catagory,
Enter the Cotton Ring is an exploratory mack truck of left-hemisphere-manifestation-in-time. Unlike the majority of vocal-noise hybrids bubbling up lately, Gräf and Giovando reference neither sound poetry, nor metal (for the dudes) or jazz balladry (for the ladies) but instead a novel hybrid of dream-incantation, lieder and effects that electronics might achieve but how? An unsettling mix of vocal wrenching and mellifluousness, effected guitar twang fuckery and intuitive anti-system electronics, it'll send you on a rapid shuttle-ferry on the space-time straits compels you to keeping chewing slowly. No CD issue or promotional tour on the horizon, just a psychedelic Western recently shot in the Badlands (no joke) for this will be part-soundtrack. Grab while you can. Twelve stars.
Ultimate VAG http://www.claviusproductions.org http://www.myspace.com/chrisgrier Dreamy moonlit melodies as imagined by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/ex-Pablo Cruise). Setting a course for the heartland of America, this duo contructs ribald ditties derived from ancient Peruvian ballads translated to these modern, not-so-chaste times. Bring your lambskin.
