A worthy Magma album; also a fantastic intro to Zeuhl music
P. Quijada | 02/12/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I'm not going to begin to describe Magma's music to the uninitiated. It is NOT music for everyone (my wife, for example, thinks they sound like Manhattan Transfer on acid). Read the amazon.com reviews of their 1973 album, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh(their best in my opinion, though I won't argue with fans of 1974's Kohntarkosz), to get a sense of what Magma's music is like. Instead I'll address this review to Magma fans, and anybody who has been thinking of investigating Zeuhl music. For Magma fans, I'll say that I like this album even better than the last studio album, Kohntarkosz Anteria, and I really like KA. This new album is more melodic and more dynamic than KA, and a little more rocking too. I felt KA to be skewed a little more toward the free-jazz side of Magma. This new album also showcases Christian Vander's drumming more than any studio effort I've heard: it is the best drumming Vander has ever done in the studio. Plus the second half of the album features lots of killer Zeuhl-style growling bass work that was missing on KA. And if you missed KA and so have not heard the re-formed Magma band in the studio yet, let me tell you that this band has the mojo of the original band from the 70s. The lead male singer is not quite Klaus Blasquiz, but he is an awfully good replacement. And Stella Vander sings better than ever. I am going to start recommending Emehntehtt-Re to anybody interested in discovering Zeuhl. By the way, this album--just like KA--is part of the Kohntarkosz triptych, composed in the mid-1970s but not recorded till 2009. Long time fans will recognize "Hhai" from several live albums. The version on this studio album is a little less intense vocally than the live efforts unfortunately, but musically it rocks, fitting in well into the album overall. EDIT: I guess I should also add that the CD comes with an additional DVD which is an hour-long documentary called "Phases" which shows snippets of practice takes for the recording of Emehntehtt-Re's electric piano, vibes, drumming, and guitar tracks. All of the snippets are essentially Christian Vander directing the musicians (in French, not Kobaian ;->) as they try out variations on certain passages while listening to the already-recorded vocal tracks. I was hoping for something more substantial but the DVD does succeed in showing just how deliberate the composition/performance of Magma's music really is, even when it sounds most spontaneous. The album also comes with a complete lyrics booklet--all of it in Kobaian."
Masterpiece of Avant-Prog
Woody Blockhead | New York | 04/07/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I'm not going to waste time telling you that Christian Vander's Magma is the greatest musical adventure of our age. Either you've cleared the learning curve of Magma's unique brand of music (a genre called Zeuhl or "celestial music", a combination of funk, soul, gospel, opera, classical choral music and intense jazz fusion) and you know exactly what I mean, or you haven't, and you think I've come from another planet (and in fact, all passionate Magma fans do come from Kobaia...) Magma fans have a tendency to forget that this music is an acquired taste, and marvel at how anyone can hear it and not rocket out of their chairs, eyes glowing. If you're up for the adventure, and ready to change all your ideas about musical genres and their supposedly necessary divisions, there's no better place to start than with this new CD, which consists of some Magma masterpieces, magnificently played and recorded. If you're content with the conventional, however, stay there, make the sign of the cross on your chest, plug your ears with thumbs, and read no further.
No, rather than a typical review in which I, the fan, try to convince you, the imagined non-fan, how musically great Magma is, explaining how they soar to celestial heights and descend into the darkest reaches of the mind in this new release, I'd like to try something different, speaking directly to fellow fans. What I'd like to try is a completely subjective report of what this new composition stirs in my imagination. I think this has not been done enough with Vander's compositions, and hope it motivates a dialog among fans about the meaning and nuances of this wonderfully evocative music. Let me make this clear: I have no special insights into the meaning of this work, other than a few things I've heard from interviews, which provide some guidelines, and I do not profess to read Vander's mind (in fact, I imagine him reading this and chuckling/marveling at how off it is.) But music speaks for itself, regardless of the intent of the composer, and it speaks to a particular consciousness, which takes it in and interprets it according to its own principles. I am certainly not saying that my reading of this work is "right." In fact, my impressions are multiple and floating, changing again each time I hear the work. But I'd like to lay them out there as they are right now, imperfect and incomplete as they are, and hear what other fans have to say, and how their impressions differ. I think that this is one valid way of enjoying and deepening our understanding of such evocative music.
E-Re I:
:00 The dark, powerful blast of the opening chord sets a theme that will return several times, most notably in the Funeral section. Symbolically, the sudden opening without buildup is that of the King's forcibly imposing his will on the world. In terms of narrative, the sound is that of cymbals striking to announce the coming of the King.
:04 Is Vander's spoken text that of a narrator, speaking over the scene, or is it a spell or incantation? It doesn't sound like conventional Kobaian, more like faux Egyptian. We'll revisit this in the last section.
:23 A wall of voices respond to the coming of the King in reverent tones. One imagines masses of people prostrating themselves and/or raising their hands and tilting their heads back in awe. The tones are majestic, but also slightly creepy. It is an almost fearful worship, full of dark splendor.
1:56 Is this male voice the King showering his blessings over the bent crowd as he passes through them?
2:46 The voices climax and fade, perhaps as the King enters his palace; a female voice announces him within.
3:04 In private, the King tosses off his public persona and reveals that he is mourning. This section (Rinde) describes a painful reaching for the impossible. In my reading, the King's love has died. We can almost imagine him reaching out imploringly at her apparition (3:50)
4:07 Note the variation on the opening voices, transformed now to the King's sighs. He realizes the emptiness of his public grandeur.
4:44 Through his bottomless sadness, an idea begins to come to the King that gives some ground to stand on; he will find a way, no matter what it takes, to bring his true love back. He is ready to take on death itself.
6:25 The King's mourning transforms to motivation; he determines not to wallow in misery but to pursue his newfound mission with full determination.
E-Re II:
0:00-3:16 With his goal in mind, the King is energized, and sets out, full of confidence and hopeful energy, on his quest, which is nothing less than to bring back the secrets of life and death from Ementet, the Land of the Dead.
3:16-14:35 The reason for the King's confidence is his spiritual certainty and faith in the higher powers. He gives a testament of his beliefs and expresses the purity of his heart and mind. In ancient Egyptian beliefs, if a human being were completely at one with himself, with no shame and nothing to hide, the soul and the organs would be one, and the body could not die. The lyrics here emphasize the heart and the blood, as well as belief in god and the completeness of love. The music itself expresses an intense purity of feeling and spiritual strength. The King is ready to take on anything.
14:35- Now the challenge begins. The mood darkens and intensifies as the King approaches the Land of the Dead, haunted with lost souls who cannot find their way back among the living. The music is simultaneously full of panicked energy and numb, especially in the lyrics, which express encounter with zombified/mummified minds and bodies, bandaged hands and mouths no longer capable of clear articulation. (Nevertheless, those dull zombie chants set up a wicked good rhythm!) With the sudden changes of rhythmic and musical pattern at 20:30, familiar reality seems to begin to shift and skip, the first of several such shifts that imply that our hero is no longer on ground that he can control. At 21:00, the jammed rhythms begin to reach a climax, peaking in a dark crescendo at 21:40, followed by the first of many variations of the Kohntarkosz theme, which suggests that the spiritual power of the King has parted the waves of the dead. Or was it something else (22:15, into E-Re III) that sent these lower demons scattering?
E-Re III:
0:00 A dark force, that makes the zombified spirits looks minor, rises with the cries of "iss iss iss iss!" and comes forward to meet the intruder into his kingdom. Since journeys into the underworld are always journeys into our own dark sides, I imagine this as a doppelganger, or evil twin of the King, though you can also imagine it as any number of terrifying animal-headed Egyptian gods. In my impressions, the two confront one another at :25-1:40, taking the measure of each other like boxers trying to psyche out their opponent. Emehntehtt-Re, initially taken aback, begins to recover his spiritual certainty at 1:13. Perhaps realizing the strength of the intruder, the Dark King does not attack, but instead engages the intruder initially in conversation, 1:51-2:30 (or is this Emehntehtt-Re stating his purpose?), perhaps trying to seduce him into joining forces. The dark side cannot be repressed, however, and comes blasting through (2:32-, countered by Emehntehtt-Re's rhythmic chant), and then most directly at 3:54-, which sounds like a demand for the intruder's soul , followed by a revelation of his full dark power like an unfolding of massive black wings (4:08-).
From here, the engagement is full on, taking form as two musical motifs: the powerful demands of the Dark King, and the upward-reaching themes of Emehntehtt-Re, which are largely variations on Kohntarkosz themes. The themes themselves grapple with each other and compete, Emehntehtt-Re's chant (4:41-5:08) countered by an overlay of dark themes (5:08-6:17). There are some signs of breakthrough at 6:55, where the Dark One seems to struggle, and the Kohntarkosz theme immediately after becomes stronger and more determined, only briefly broken by its cries. This theme dominates from 7:37 and seems to make solid headway, but the voice of the Dark King reassert itself at 7:52, and despite a strong attack, its demands are as strong as ever at 9:32. These are countered by a fierce litany of words powerfully underwrit with a Kohntarkosz theme. In response to this onslaught, the Dark King seems to lose its grip at 11:11, in desperate, drowning vocalizations, and the Kohntarkosz theme rises powerfully thereafter, seemingly fully triumphant.
From 12:25, however, we have another strange cycling of musical themes, like the sudden shifts in 20:30 of E-Re II, that suggest that this whole sequence may be a dream, or that reality is not in Emehntehtt-Re's control. At 12:37 and again at 12:42, we hear refrains of the Hhai opening from E-Re II (3:22), followed by a now dreamy, dramatically slowed-down version of a Kohntarkosz theme.
E-Re IV:
The sudden and complete change in instrumentation, vocals and tone suggests an extreme switch of tableaux. This is for me the most obscure section, and its contents are vital, as it ends with Emehntehtt-Re's death, and an event like that cannot pass without good explanation.
First, it seems to me that in this section Emehntehtt-Re awakes, from a sleeping dream or waking vision, disoriented and unable to tell whether what he has just undergone was real or imaginary. Initially, he seems to taste his achievement, hardly believing it. Then, in his mind, he replays the Kohntarkosz theme of the last part, which signifies his victory over death. This begins galloping and joyful, but cycles down and closes in doubt and darkness. The wondering, bittersweet vocals that follow suggest that he is now uncertain about what he gone through and who he is. Then, following some beautiful jazz piano, the Kohntarkosz theme begins again, this time thoughtfully and profoundly, cycling with increasing rapidity as the King begins to enter into it, but closing unexpectedly with a sudden snap. As Vander notes in the DVD accompanying this CD, this snap is the precedent for the killing blow, perhaps an initial knife stab to the King's stomach or back. The voice of the stunned King sounds out in a single note, in an extended instant in which he realizes in shock that he has been struck, then a second, final slash at the piano and broken vocal signify the killing blow, perhaps a beheading.
So why did the King die? I imagine that he stopped paying attention to the affairs of state to go off on his inner, spiritual quest to discover the meanings of life and death, and that more worldly forces took advantage of their opportunity to paint the King as a lunatic and plot against him. The tragedy in this case is that worldly forces took their petty, meaningless advantage at just that moment that the King was on the verge of discovering something that would have transformed life itself. Now the world is all theirs, and in utter darkness.
Funehrarium Kanht and Sehe
The pulsing pain and bleakness of these final sections most directly represents the mourning of the King's followers and his own subsequent installment in the Land of the Dead, where chains clank and voices moan, but I believe that they also represent a larger issue: Vander's vision of the decrepit human race. The Hero-King who could have brought enlightenment was assassinated for worldly reasons just as he was on the verge of bringing light, and now humanity resides in utter darkness, stuck in its own hell. Although Emehntehtt-Re would seem to occupy a different space and time than the future history of the Kobaian mission and the ultimate destruction of Earth, in fact, the two major Magma cycles, Kohntarkosz and Theusz Hamtahhk, are intimately connected.
"
An eternal and MAGnificent album by MAGMA
Ramas | Mexico City | 06/16/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I totally agree on what has been said in previous reviews regarding the attempt to describe MAGMA's music, but it can be said that this jazz-fusion-outofspacey-rock ensemble has exceeded all my expectations with this new release.
An album that took three decades to composea and record (as it is stated in the inner notes), captures in Magma's unique ghostly - eerie mood a whole mystic and even extra-terrestrial experience, Christian Vander's percussive structures and the album's instrumentation in its whole is as superb as it could ever be, and when the operatic choir and the kobaïan lyrics are added... man, that is something that will definitely make the right hemmisphere of your brain tickle.
For the non-initiated on Magma - A great way to start listening to REAL high quality music
For prog-art-avantgarde rock/jazz fans - An album you MUST HAVE
For MAGMA fans - ILLUMINATION"
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1