Magik Markers: Enjoy the Silence

"In Hindu philosophy, they get to that point where there's this threshold between the conscious and subconscious reality, and there's just this little dot, the Bindi point, where the two realities are one, where one reality is coming into being and the other's going out of it. You have to stay in touch with that if you're going to create anything." Quite a mission statement, I say. "That's what I think noise is," Pete Nolan replies, "and we embrace noise fully."

Noise dominates the Magik Markers sound. See them, listen to them, hear about them: noise shadows their every step. Their live shows are a blitz of howling feedback, their recordings a fuzz of distorted melody, and both feature plenty of primal vocals and scattered drums. But despite forming as a free rock group, the duo’s recent output has taken a sidestep from full-on freedom to more realised structures. "With this band, more than any I've been in, it seems like we're inventing what we sound like from scratch," says Nolan, the percussive counterpart to anti-guitar hero Elisa Ambrogio. "And at first glance it now seems like 'oh, they are playing tunes, they're done with noise', but that's not the case. We've just developed out of that sense of freedom."

Their new album, Balf Quarry, steps out of the sonic wreckage of 2007's Boss with renewed restraint. Nolan shows little sentimentality for the Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth fame)-produced release. "With the last record, we jammed every frequency," says Nolan. "We're really happy with Boss, but a lot of the songs had a similar feeling. We had a lot of things in mind that we didn't want to do."

On Balf Quarry, the band slow down and allow the listener to take a breath. The songs have a more developed sense of direction and development, as they find a pace that balances the noise and an absence of noise. Restraint is the key here, no longer noise for noise’s sake. A greater sense of space is creeping into their work, challenging and breaking up the sound, lending it a breathability that energises the music, and creates a renewed listenability. And sometimes, in those spaces, is silence. "Silence to me is really valuable," says Nolan. "In New York City, you can't even control the sound in your own home... silence is not that easy to find." It seems Magik Markers are trying to discover the sense of calm that silence gives in their own music.

Their continuing development has attracted the attention of the label Drag City, who set them up to record with Scott Colburn, one-time producer of Animal Collective and Arcade Fire. "I knew Scott would take what we threw at him, and would have an idea of where we were coming from,”says Nolan. “We're not playing by any rule books when we're going in to make a record." But the band don't feel any of the pressure that comes with greater exposure. "It's more of a liberating thing than feeling some kind of a pressure. We've been dying to make another record, and it's a relief to be able to do how it we wanted".

For a band who have developed their own distinctive sound, it is rewarding to hear them continue to reinvent it. Although as Pete Nolan is very aware, it is always about the noise, rather than the silence. "There's never complete silence. If you put yourself in a completely enclosed room that has zero sound coming in, you start to hear the sound of the blood running through your ears."