The album explodes with a fuzzed out lo-fi racket that disintegrates into a mess of distortion.
Wonky doesn’t come close to the off-kilter, off-key ‘Acts of Desperation’ – so slackerist that holding a tune is just far too much effort – as is holding down a chord or tuning a guitar. The punky ruckus of ‘Bonfire’ nabs the drum fill from Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Nag Nag Nag’ is so raw as to still be roaming, and sounds like a band rehearsal, recorded from the next room. But it’s all part of the charm, as are sweetly wistful pop moments, like the gently whimsical ‘Mirrorless’ that simply drifts beautifully.
Of course, it’s all spectacularly rough around the edges, and at its core: you couldn’t call it underproduced; there’s no discernible production whatsoever. Fizz and reverb collide and threaten to bury many of the songs, masking their compositional and musical qualities that suggests they simply don’t care. Oh, but they do care. That’s lo-fi for you: there’s a kind of (anti-)elitism around the genre that implies if you can’t handle the defects and shortcomings, then it’s your loss and you’re better off sticking to slick, mass-market bilge that’s tweaked to unreal digital perfection. You want surface or sincerity?
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Lo-fi adherents may be cutting their noses off to spite their faces in refusing to make their music more accessible, but they’ve got a point, in that a good song is a good song, regardless of the sound quality. And Magik Markers have got some great songs on ‘Surrender to the Fantasy’, and they’re keeping it real, which makes it more than worth the effort.
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