My Marathon / themorningcall
Instrumental Split 7”
Sounds Are Active
This is an engaging four-track 7” split between two instrumental, experimental acts, distinctly separated in expression but certainly tying in with one another’s fluidly driven approach. My Marathon is a San Francisco-based quartet featuring a pretty basic rock line-up (excluding the drummer’s trombone stints and former Halo Friendlies’ Deanna Lewis dabbling on the xylophone). Their two tracks are anything but standard-fare, though. The darkly boisterous “559 Pennsylvania” offers guitar-driven and (relatively) approachable avant-rock, while “The Getaway” is the real treat here: a sharply jagged post-rock affair that reaches for a series of climaxes, constantly interrupted by stabbed lines and angularly melodic attacks.
themorningcall is the solo project from Create (!) founder Chris Schlarb, who plays all instruments himself, assisted only by rapper Zyron Jackson’s drumming skills on one of his two tracks here. “Stereotomy” offers some delightfully disturbed instrumental epilepsy, while “August” is an uncomfortably lush piece, featuring unstable piano lines over a hypnotically minimalist backing track. With Schlarb’s four saxophones wailing atonally away, it all eventually evolves into plain nightmarish ambience. Great stuff.
Sounds Are Active Records: http://www.soundsareactive.com/
