Zeuhl (Search and Dëstroktïẁ)

ILM needs a dedicated Zeuhl thread but really I wanted to talk this album by Corima called Quetzalcoatl. Released in 2012, I firmly believe this deserves a place with the all-time Zeuhl greats. It is very much in debut to Magma and Koenjihyakkei but it does something which I find to be very rare and that's that it gets the best of both worlds. It gets the intricacies of the former with the intensity of the latter - it may lose some points for being derivative but it's great to hear anyone making this kind of music right now. Between them and Setna (who also released an excellent disc in 2012) it occured to me that there may be a bunch of under-the-radar Zeuhl groups out there, waiting for zunkies like me to discover. ILM, what you got??

I used to think that all these bands learned all the words in the language that Magma made but they just make up their own gibberish don't they?

not much to add but i'm in a heavy magma and related bands phase atm and this has been getting heavy play. so funky and heavy and bizarre!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7SoHeZr8M

oh god, could i use the word heavy more? my brain is fucked.

you ever hear Weidorje?

i know of them but haven't actually listened to anything -- i haven't even given koenjihyakkei a proper listen yet despite knowing abt them for years

Viva Koenji/Koenji 2 is, um, a feat of sonic engineering you have to gawp at at least once in your life

Guapo, especially the early-mid stuff when they were welding Zeuhl and Ground Zero/Zorn together.

Search: Weidorje- they only put out one album, but they had a bunch of compositions written for a second album, including "Nor" released on Patrick Gauthier's _Bebe Godzilla_ and "Une Parcelle d'Urantia" on the Paga Group's s/t LP.

A particular favorite of mine has been the sole Super Freego LP, kind of a combination of zeuhl with new wave a la the B-52s.

A couple other '80s Zeuhl-and-other-genre crossovers I haven't heard in their entirety are Armande Altai, which crosses chanson and zeuhl, and Philippe Cauvin, which crosses free folk and zeuhl.

The first two Bondage Fruit albums, before they got rid of the singers and just went into the overlong Crimson/Mahavishnu thing are great too.

The band Yeti are great, particularly their never-properly-recorded epic "Man with the Lamp". Eventually they evolved into The Great Tyrant, who recorded a really nice death-rock meets zeuhl record that never got officially released.

Pienza Ethnorkestra- Eastern European-style hurdy-gurdy zeuhl.

'90s Magma tribute band "Don't Die" were pretty top-notch if you can find any of their live tapes.

The tribute CDs "Hamtai!" and "Hur" are also nice.

There's tons more zeuhl- Russian band Syncopated Silence, at least one zeuhl cut by the Kentucky prog band Ut Gret, the superb group Magister Dixit, etc., but I don't want to make this a novel!

Destroy: Fascist crap like "Zess". Yuck.

please do!

That Weidorje album is incredible - I've only heard it recently, but it definitely hits the spot.

I have heard of Super Freego, will try to find a copy. That sounds pretty excellent.

The first Bondage Fruit album I have and really like. To me it sounds like Jyoji Sawada's Base of Fiction but it's a lot more accessible and fun. Will try to track down the second.

Guapo never quite did it for me. Their early stuff is just real noisy, like early Ruins without the tunes. I found Five Suns to be overboard on the noise but I feel I need to give it another few listens.

Again, I've rec'd them enough on the Neo-prog thread, but I find Deluge Grander and Birds & Buildings (both run by the same guy) to be one of the best modern examples of this sound, though it is more epic-prog-meets-Zeuhl more than the more "standard" stuff like the Corima album I mentioned. I think there is sort of a prog/Zeuhl/jazz hybrid genre that encompasses stuff like Yezda Urfa, Gentle Giant, and Area, but I don't know what it would be called.

The second track (I think it was second?) of Guapo - Five Suns was incredible though, what a satisfying riff!

anyone dissing Guapo itt, bear in mind MN has an um vested interest ;)

This was one of the best things I ever d/loaded from Mutant Sounds:

http://alain.lebon4.free.fr/soleil/shub-gb.html

XP - I have no strong connection to Guapo, honest, an ex member is a good chum, that's really all, so have at it all you like :)

Rhùn are the best I've heard from the newer crop of Zeuhlers, kind of an early Magma thing going on here and there :

https://rhunmusic.bandcamp.com/album/h-album-2013

Weird "genre" innit, basically it's bands that sound like Magma. If you don't sound pretty much like them (say at least 50% of your obvious influences are, basically, Magma) you don't count, so small wonder it all gets a bit derivative.

This album was just reissued, synth Zeuhl with actual members of Magma playing on it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcPFjjX8q_U

Bernard Szajner, don't think that counts.

Can't help much with the thread topic, Zeuhl as a genre seems pretty vacant to me after investigating a bit. Even the Weidorje album is pretty dire IMO. The Jannik Top 1970s albums, the 2 Guapo albums with the bass player and the almost-Zheul group Heldon are the best of it to my tastes.

I have to defend my darling, though - Zess is godhead shit, the culmination of Vander's entire project. I think it's quite a stretch, and a mistake, to read and dismiss it as "fascist" just because it has a march rhythm and an impassioned speech. Might as well call the entire Magma oeuvre fascist and give up on it entirely. If anything Zess is the story of a celestial zeuhl choir rebelling against a fictional dictator with chiming ostinatos of overwhelming beauty as their secret weapon - essentially the same theme/story as the MDK trilogy. Any fascist elements one perceives are just that, elements, part of the story the band is telling. I don't deny those elements are there, they clearly are, but for me it is about as Fascist in the final analysis as Chaplin's Great Dictator!!!

I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, I know I'm not going to convince anyone, I just don't think Zess should be tossed aside so lightly. It is a complex and worthy work of art - it is the very essence of Zeuhl and the ultimate Magma song, whether you like it or not. It has everything that sets Magma apart from other bands - all concentrated and sublimated into an unusually monumental tapestry that unfolds and reveals itself only gradually over the course of its running time. Like any great work of art it is a bundle of contradictions and rightly poses all sorts of questions that have no answers. After listening to it regularly for about 12 years, very few musical works have proved as fertile and rewarding for me. Essential listening, even if only as yin to Kohntarkosz' equally perplexing yang.

They never actually got round to recording it in the studio did they? Just live versions available I think.

http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=11

The problem I have with Zeuhl is that I heard Ruins/Koenji Hyakkei first and went back to the source... Magma sound so comparatively lumpy and lifeless to me and I've never really been able to get into them. I'll keep trying though in the hope that one day they'll grab me.

Not right now though, I'm hearing Bondage Fruit I/II for the first time and holy shit this is hitting the right spot

Been hoping to see Dun - Eros for a decent price for quite a while. I always hear it's one of the best.

Well, I do know that this is a really controversial topic and heatd for a lot of people, and I don't want to start a fight either, but I do think a lot of the points Marc Adler has made on this topic are, I think, very solid and substantiated. Aside from anything else I regard the interview in Reflechir & Agir as conclusive evidence that Christian Vander is a person with strong fascist sympathies. Of course that does not invalidate his music, but I do feel strongly that people need to be aware of it and take it into account when assessing the work of Magma; I regret that I was ignorant of it for so long. For me, in my personal judgment, I do think of "Zess" as a piece of music which does more harm than good.

Onto happier topics. I definitely do recommend an early '80s record by a band called "Presage", which is supposedly italo-disco, but a lot of the music has very much in common with zeuhl, particularly the track "Cyborg". While we are talking about the intersection of disco and zeuhl (which of course also occurs on Magma's _Attahk_ record to a degree), a guy by the name of Brian Ellis has a really nice Giorgio Moroder style version of De Futura.

Anything on Soleil Zeuhl is highly recommended. Dun (which has a really odd combined flute/tuned percussion attack... I guess maybe one could compare it to Pierre Moerlen's Gong but it doesn't sound anything like them) as well as Archaia are excellent musically. One can also speak of Triple Zero, the Universal Totem Orchestra, etc...

http://kohntarkosz.blogspot.ie/2012/07/english-translation-of-vander-interview.html

I just read that interview. From the comments I can see that the magazine was a fascist one but that's where the trouble seems to be, whether he gave an interview because he had similar views or just did an interview for the sake of doing an interview.

Interesting about the Mike Oldfield thing.

Dunno about Univers Zero and Present but Art Zoyd really don't owe a whole lot to Magma, their vision is way more gothic, old european decadent.

What harm can Zess do if nobody really knows what he's saying?

Going to listen to the full "Zess" now from Epok 4. I've never really been into this piece, and always wished it was a lot shorter. However, like a lot of Magma (and Offering) I may come around to it on many repeat listens. The stuff about Vander and fascism has been around forever -- but the verdict on whether or not he's a Nazi, or at least respects the audacity of someone like Hitler, depends on who you ask. I've asked multiple people who played or toured with him, and have received as many variants on the answer as people asked. My personal feeling is that there's no way an artist who believes in the power of love, as Vander has always said, and in the vision of Coltrane, could be a Nazi. Maybe he appreciated the intense devotion and power wielded by Hitler, who knows. Maybe he appreciates power and intensity of any kind, as many artists do -- the power of music isn't something you can touch or own, though you can feel it, and a lucky few can wield it, at least for a time. Vander seems enigmatic about quite a lot, and it wouldn't surprise me to see these rumors boil down to something like that. It would be a MAJOR BUMMER if it turned out that he was actually a Nazi or into fascism -- but probably not as big a disappointment as his Jewish wife and bandmate of 40 years would have.

The problem I have with Zeuhl is that I heard Ruins/Koenji Hyakkei first and went back to the source... Magma sound so comparatively lumpy and lifeless to me and I've never really been able to get into them. I'll keep trying though in the hope that one day they'll grab me.

On the Ruins vs Magma angle, I was into the former before the latter. I'd read so much about how much Ruins and Koenji were influenced by Magma, I checked them out. It turns out Ruins and Koenji only really take superficial aspects of Magma's sound (and also other groups like Area, This Heat) -- the core of what I consider "zeuhl" isn't necessarily about a heavy, powerful sound. There's actually a lot of delicacy and straight out prettiness to it, and to me, there's a greater kinship between Magma and, say, Steve Reich or Philip Glass, than Ruins. In fact, even bands like Eskaton and Weidorje, who are more obviously indebted to Magma than Ruins, don't quite nail the mysticism or, gulp, spirituality of Magma's music. To me, more than the weird combo of operatic/soul singing or strange sci-fi backstory, it's the spiritual aspect of Magma that makes their music unique.

x-post

By the way I agree with Dominique's take on the "Vander is a Nazi" thing - I think he's got a lot of vices and it seems like he's constantly contradicting himself every time he speaks. When I listen to the music I don't feel anything opressive about it - it sounds very spiritual and pure to me. I never understood the Mike Oldfield thing either; does anyone but Vander have any clue what part of "Tubular Bells" ripped off MDK? I would never associate those pieces.

I assume Zess is still incomplete? Has he changed his mind about recording the whole thing?

The story I heard was that it wasn't MDK Vander accused Oldfield of ripping off, but another piece called "La" Dawotsin. The beginning of "La" Dawotsin does indeed strongly resemble Tubular Bells. On the other hand, the first known recording of it is, I believe, from 1977, whereas the Tubular Bells demos date back to '71, before Oldfield ever met Vander, plus Tubular Bells is really quite a lot better than "La" Dawotsin. So I'm not exactly very sympathetic to Vander's claims on this.

I absolutely agree that Vander is a complex person, and I'm not saying that we should only think of him in fascist terms. I just get disturbed when I hear people say he couldn't possibly be a fascist, or if he is he's not a "real" fascist, whatever it is that means these days. Above all I don't think it's right to try and make excuses for his fascist sympathies. He's certainly not making excuses for them. Particularly words like "spiritual" and "pure" (gulp!) are good descriptors of Vander's music but are really not at all incompatible with fascism.

Liking Vander's music doesn't make one a fascist, nor do I think that music as unabashedly strange as Magma's possesses a serious threat to humanist ideals, but as popular as Marine Le Pen is in France these days I think these aspects of Vander's work need to be taken seriously.

does anyone but Vander have any clue what part of "Tubular Bells" ripped off MDK?

Speaking of which, compare the intro of this with the intro of "Kohntarkosz (Part Two)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFv2mDbiEiY

Glad that wasn't taken to harshly, I didn't mean to come on so strongly, thanks guys. The music is what counts for me in the end, either way.

Too harshly that is, whoops.

J A Caesar's Shin Toku Maru album is supposed to be a sort of classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svr8QxXqCI4

μουσική is a greek word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hOK7bU0S1Y