Arts & Entertainment
Spy Music Festival: Chicago Underground Duo / Haunted House / Magik Markers
The Magik Markers (9 p.m.) are a rock band from Hartford, Connecticut. The members, Elisa Ambrogio, Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby started the band in their basement in 2001. After opening for Sonic Youth on their American tour in 2004, the band gained notoriety. Their debut album, I Trust My Guitar, Etc. (released in vinyl only), was released in 2005 on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label. In 2006, they released A Panegyric To The Things I Do Not Understand under Gulcher Records, the Markers’ first proper CD. Also in 2006, the band recorded a session for Southern Records’ Latitudes series, which was released as The Voldoror Dance.
Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek are musicians of considerable talent and acclaim who have created a musical experience that is as challenging as it is rewarding. The two comprise the Chicago Underground Duo (7 p.m.), and have performed together in several iterations: Chicago Underground Duo, Chicago Underground Trio, Chicago Underground Quartet, and Chicago Underground Orchestra.
The blues has grown up a lot in the last ten years, since guitarist Andrew Burnes left New York for Georgia, bringing a de facto end to the powerful abstract blues of Haunted House (8 p.m.). In the time since, a new generation — sometimes referred to as Freak Folk or New Weird America and spearheaded by Tom Carter, Jack Rose and Ben Chasny— has followed in the footsteps of Loren Connors, John Fahey and a handful of others who have long maintained that the blues is something more than 12 bars and a backbeat.