Miss Murgatroid

• Genre: Experimental
• Hometown: Portland

About

Miss Murgatroid's haunting music for amplified accordion falls somewhere between fantasy dwarf music and free noise. Put in another way, she is an Avant-Gardist who left her heart at the Renaissance Faire. Running her instrument though various effects, she creates deep, dynamic bodies of sound ranging from meditative drones to mischievous merry-go-rounds. She thrives on the church lady image associated with the accordion, drawing her unsuspecting audience in with strange melodies before treating them to startling bouts of improvisation. Song structure and abstract experimentalism seem to have a symbiotic relationship within her music, a duality that made her collaboration with pop-oriented violinist Petra Haden (that dog., the Rentals) such a profound success.

- Doug Russell