MARKERS, THE LONDON GUITAR DUO (FEAT MEMBERS OF SEX SWING, NARROWS, ART OF BURNING WATER AND MORE) -RELEASE THEIR DEBUT ALBUM HEAVEN IN THE DARK EARTH

MARKERS, THE LONDON GUITAR DUO (FEAT MEMBERS OF SEX SWING, NARROWS, ART OF BURNING WATER AND MORE) RELEASE THEIR DEBUT ALBUM HEAVEN IN THE DARK EARTH 

Releasing their debut album, Markers are a London-based guitar duo comprised of seasoned musicians Jason Carty and Jodie Cox, both prolific members of the city’s math rock scene, as founding members of and collaborators with the likes of Sex Swing, Narrows, Geiger Counter, Foe, Exes, Rohame, Art of Burning Water and Earth. Their utterly beguiling new album Heaven In The Dark Earth is released nowvia Godunknown .

Live dates in support of the album, including their record release show in London are listed below. 

Markers: UK Live Dates:

26-Feb: London – Servants Jazz Quarters (Album release Show)

15-Mar: Nottingham, JT Soar 

16-Mar: Shipley, The Triangle

17-Mar: Liverpool, The Old Brazilian Embassy

19-Apr: Brighton, The Prince Albert (with Jaye Jayle)

02-May: Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (with Jaye Jayle)

Illustrating another side to the duo’s compositional flare, and not on the album itself is this beautifully minimalist rendition of Jesus Lizard’s classic track “Pastoral” which premiered via The Quietus. 

The band explains: “Our arrangement of The Jesus Lizard song ‘Pastoral’, was evolved on and off over a couple of years. Initially, we played the melody for fun during the writing of our album, but it sounded so pretty through the filter of our sound, that we decided to finalise and record it. The original has a really strong lead melody, so we explored the expansion of this, holding it back in order to reveal it a bit more slowly. We would like to express our eternal gratitude to The Jesus Lizard for writing such a beautiful song, and we also hope that you find our take on it enjoyable.“

Markers’ debut album, Heaven In The Dark Earth is for them a radical departure from genre music. Without voice or rhythm section and only the sound of their two guitars, Carty and Cox explore how each note is wrung or coaxed, relying heavily on tone, dexterity and carefully refined song-structure. The duo enter an intimate conversation, completing, interjecting or daring each other’s turns of phrase, revelling in the all-encompassing instant suspended in a tone (and vice versa: a tone suspended in an instant), before the barely articulated haunting chords disappear into oblivion.  

 Whilst rejecting the protective shield of the hard-rock formula might have left Carty and Cox utterly exposed, Marker’s have pinned all their faith on the primordial power, and nuanced musical realms of strings plucked by a human hand. Their music flows freely, like a lyrical stream of consciousness absorbing and reflecting elements of the world in which it is embedded. 

The results are revelatory, as the duo discover a whole new range of structural possibilities and ultimately, achieve a higher degree of emotional expression.  Markers’ music is firmly anchored in time. Thus, it naturally forms an intricate relationship with the medium of film. Both guitarists have a keen interest in cinema, especially in its slower, meditative variety, quoting Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, dir. David Lynch), Ry Cooder (Paris, Texas, dir. Wim Wenders) and Johnny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) as their primary influences. Their work is born from a fascination with the process of becoming, which evokes images of unsettled skies and a vast, rugged landscape striped with dirt roads stretching as far as the eye can see, and much beyond, into the unknown. 

Ultimately for Markers, it is this patient reverence to a single musical unit, carrying a sliver of a mental image encapsulated in time, that gives their work not just meditative but nearly metaphysical quality, as they strive to touch upon the intangible. (adapted text originally provided by Anna Bajor-Ciciliati, 2018).

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