MAGIK MARKERS- LIVE @ HALL MALL

many of you know my childhood friend/former roommate/funniest (and strongest) man alive steve gunn. if you dont he is the standing guitarist in the blue shirt. this is from last summer when he toured as a member of magik markers. this clip is from iowa, i saw the nyc date on this tour and steve played his guitar faster than i had ever seen him play before. his main band is with pete (the drummer from magik markers) and former philadelphian marcia bassett (also un and double leopards) they are called ghq and they have a new record out called crystal healing, it is really good.

(from pitchfork)

GHQ
Crystal Healing
[Three-Lobed; 2007]
Rating: 7.6

Since ancient times, the mystical healing powers of crystals and charmstones have been used by shamanistic cultures around the globe. But most modern scientists and physicians would credit whatever benefits might be attained by their use to a placebo effect or the power of suggestion. A similarly powerful, suggestive aura surrounds the work of psych-drone trio GHQ, and their latest small-batch document Crystal Healing. As with their rest of their output, the album is dense with tantalizing drone figures and ghostly melodies that hang mirage-like in the hovering mist, with a transportive effect that feels far too potent for any placebo.

Comprised of the prolific trio of Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu, Zaimph), Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Spectre Folk, Vanishing Voice) and Steve Gunn (Magik Markers, Moongang), the discography of GHQ seems now to have progressed them beyond the status of a mere offshoot or side project. Crystal Healing is the second GHQ full-length offering on Three-Lobed, following 2006's excellent live set Heavy Elements, and it finds the group further developing its shared private vocabulary. Though still frequently driven by acoustic instruments, there seems a marginal increase here in overall electricity, and as a result it feels slightly less like stumbling upon the fire circle of some obscure beachside cult. Filled with darting firefly guitar leads and shadowy effects, the album's slow-moving acid clouds can at points resemble those that handsomely billowed from the earliest trio versions of Charalambides.

Despite the continued simplicity of GHQ's general approach, Crystal Healing contains a surprising breadth and variety within its sun-damaged drones. "Asphalt Rainbows" could almost pass for Jewelled Antler folk at its most hallucinatory, with Nolan's zoned vocals constantly threatening to actually shape themselves into a coherent lyric. Elsewhere, however, on such amorphous tracks as "Invitation In" and "Varunani Night Wave" the trio strays much closer to the thick, seamless noise frequencies of Double Leopards. Throughout the album GHQ purposefully keep their exact sound sources and methods rather blurred, so that when an untreated acoustic guitar climbs to the forefront on "Purple Sun for Exalted Ones", or when what sounds to be a fuzzed-out electric bass threads its way through "Radiance Illuminate", the effect can be as that of catching the briefest glimpse of a lost city or forgotten civilization through the overgrown canopied forest.

The album reaches its ceremonial apex on the nine-minute closing title track, a piece that masterfully incorporates all of GHQ's various strands into a boundless, transfixing whole. Over a lo-fi Tony Conrad/Henry Flynt scraping drone, Gunn's guitar moves in elliptical patterns, dropping single notes like tiny lanterns floated onto a glassy, unlit pond. Early copies of Crystal Healing arrived with an extra disc that feature two extended bonus tracks, but the album on its own feels complete and self-contained as it again illustrates GHQ's considerable restorative powers. Placebo? If the final curative result is the same, what's the difference?


-Matthew Murphy, July 09, 2007