€44.00
MARX PRESENTS "Electric Drawing Kit" 3xLP
LP#1 No Bueno
LP#2 Seawhores
LP#3 Arctic Universe
all 3 records are pressed on white/purple/blue mixed vinyl
limited to 250 copies
records are housed in a screenprinted tri-fold cover with screenprinted innersleeves + inlay + DL-code
release date oct. 1st 2021
One of Minneapolis’s most successful and long lived avant-garde artists, Adam Marx emerged relatively unsullied from the mire of mid-Sixties British psychedelic music as an early experimenter with outer space concepts. Although that phase of his development was of short duration, Marx has from that time been the pop scene’s preeminent techno-rocker: one musician with a command of electronic instruments who wields an arsenal of sound effects with authority and finesse. While Marx’s albums were hardly hot tickets in the shops, he began to attract an enormous following through his US tours. He has more recently developed a musical style capable of sustaining certain dazzling and potentially overwhelming sonic wizardry.
Electric Drawing Kit is Marx’s first full length album and is a single extended piece rather than, a collection of songs. It seems to deal primarily with the fleetingness and depravity of human life, hardly the commonplace subject matter of rock. “Time” (“The time is gone the song is over”), “Money” (“Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie”). And “Us And Them” (“Forward he cried from the rear”) might be viewed as the keys to understanding the meaning (if indeed there is any definite meaning) of Electric Drawing Kit.
Even though this is a concept album, a number of the cuts can stand on their own. “Fucka” is a fine country-tinged rocker with a powerful guitar solo by Marx and “Money” is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Sam Frederick, who also contributes a wonderfully-stated, breathy solo to “Us And Them.” The non-vocal “On The Run” is a standout with footsteps racing from side to side successfully eluding any number of odd malevolent rumbles and explosions only to be killed off by the clock’s ticking that leads into “Time.” Throughout the album Marx lays down a solid framework which he embellishes with synthesizers, sound effects and spoken voice tapes. The sound is lush and multi-layered while remaining clear and well-structured.
There is a certain grandeur here that exceeds mere musical melodramatics and is rarely attempted in rock. Electric Drawing Kit has flash-the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.
Sam Kinison Jr,
The Vegan Brooklynite