MAGMA - rfi

I got the DVD of it! In a car boot sale! For £5! Tried watching all of it in one sitting, but that was being wildly over-ambitious on my part. And stretched my schoolboy French well beyond the limit trying to follow the documentary that came with it.

More so given that said item is out of print now. Maybe I could trouble Steve Davis for a copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnNngMb4lvk

Two awesome's in the same post about Magma. Could've been more.

http://www.emusic.com/artist/Magma/11777412.html

I have Kohntarkosz, Attahk and Udu Wudu. What next among these?

those arent so hot

pretty much all of the other albums were added to emusic today

that's almost a reason to join emusic. i'll have to do the 150 free mp3s thing again soon.

abanana - wurdah itah is the best record you don't list, but if you can stand another version of kohntarkosz, the BBC 1974 Londres is great (esp as its version of theusz hamtaahk is arguably definitive).

Followed Dominique's suggestions from here over to AllMusic, read the reviews of the recs he suggests.

Saw he wrote those reviews.

lolz.

Laurent Thibault - Mais on ne peut pas Rever tout le Temps

^^^^

D LEONE, is this good?

it's nice - nothing like Magma tho, more pastoral, symphonic prog. Most people talk about the song "Oree" because it has really pretty/wispy vocals from Amanda Parsons from National Health/Hatfield & the North, but my fave is "La Caravane de l'Oubli" which to me kind of sounds like a smoothed out Can -- or more accurately Popul Vuh trying to do Can.

wow so i can't believe how much wurdah itah sounds like stravinsky's les noces

I like most of the Magma I've heard (which isn't a whole lot), but I am way way way more drawn to the dark foreboding equally ultra prog vibe of Univers Zero. It's so much more scary and less wacky.

Loaned some gear to Richard Pinhas trio last year and one of the dudes from Magma (not Zander) played my drums. He was great.

The Ruins (alone) set I saw a few months later was fucking insane though.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/160/4758680.jpg

Magma making another US tour

wow so i can't believe how much wurdah itah sounds like stravinsky's les noces

Agreed. I had never heard Les Noces until recently, and was in awe...that piece kicks serious ass. I have the version on Naxos with "Oedipus Rex" (which I wasn't too fond of), which is pretty well-regarded.

Audio-only live footage of a completely new epic called Felicite Thosz:

pt 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hanyCuHAabg
pt 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvJVz1QGCxo
pt 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kagy4FmX9M
pt 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtfNNnDwBSM

see also some pro-footage of their recent Japan tour, tons of backstage, rehearsal, travel stuff:

pt 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEgYARe43UA
pt 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COnVPWfiSJs
pt 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KJduqWyFcg
pt 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-dDWMj74B4

blogspot bootlegs of Felicite Thosz out and about

though I'm getting as fatigued as anyone from the 'take a foreign song and add absurdist english subtitles' concept, I will make an exception for Kobaïan

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

If I don't own any Magma but like what I've heard from a compilation of various tracks that a friend gave me, is the "Studio Zund" boxset worth spending £80 on? It seems to be OOP and on the verge of completely disappearing, so I've basically convinced myself it's a wholly sensible purchase... what say thee Magma heads?

starting out more modestly, say with udu wudu, is not at all a bad way to go. it might be pretty overwhelming to digest all at once

Well, a wee bit more scouting located me one still for £50, so I've just ordered that! We'll see if it actually comes up. I do tend to be a bit of a 'in at the deep end' kind of guy.

Udu Wudu was my favourite of the stuff on my compilation though, btw.

Thinking of trying to get down to London to see them at the Barbican next month as well, but the travel expense from Glasgow is prohibitive.

well good luck. and be careful. that is one intense discography. don't forget to update here once it digests some

Apparently the new album "Emehntet-Re" will be out in November, this is supposedly the last part of a trilogy, the first 2 parts being Kohntarkosz and Kohntarkosz Anteria.

I've been thinking about heading to the Barbican show to see them for a few weeks, but only just checked trains today, assuming that they would be ridiculously expensive. Amazingly they're not and I just bought a return tran ticket Glasgow<->London for under £40!

I'm going to see Magma!

I'll need to kill time in London afterwards until my train leaves at 5am on the Wednesday morning, but that's for another thread perhaps...

I'm going to see Magma, too! I just bought my ticket to the Barbican show. Chrome Hoof and Massiera, too, how could I resist?

Cool beans, hopefully a friendly face! I don't know if any Glasgow cohorts will be able to make the Prog Pilgrimage with me, unfortunately.

i'm into magma but yeah, not going to London for this.

"...and Massiera, too" !!!

he's going to play live?! sounds very interesting!

Seems like it! I'm dead curious.

http://barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=9534

is Steve Davis promoting the Magma/Barbican show (he used to be the sponsor for all their london gigs)?

Andy Votel, it says.

interesting!

Didn't you promote a concert for them?

In the late Eighties, I thought it would be nice if they came over to London to do a gig, so I set up Interesting Promotions to promote it. Well, I paid the bill is what I really mean. I never realised that there were 14 of them in the band, which raised the overheads slightly. They did three nights at the Bloomsbury theatre; the last night was a sell-out. I'd done my nuts (spent too much money), too, so it was great. Then I went back to (whispers) playing snooker.

Would you ever do it again?

Interesting Promotions sits there on the loss sheet, so probably not. What would be good, though, is if you could get all of the Canterbury jazz rock bands together and create a festival. They do a similar thing in America called Prog Fest.

"Andy Votel, it says"

Rather obviously, I would say.
Let us know if its good! :)

OK, now clearing some things up! Massiera came onstage to "collaborate" with Chrome Hoof. Which basically meant that CH played some Massiera tunes and he went WOORGGGH AAAHHH OOOOF over the top and occasionally banged a sample pad. It was, erm, interesting. The best thing about it was the two silver alien dancers pretending to capture him and drag him off to eat him.

Sorry, I'm still a bit dazed from Magma. Seriously. I didn't think anyone could really follow Chrome Hoof. Except the stage went all dark and Magma snuck on like spacemonks from planet prog and suddenly the lights went all red and then PHHWWWOOOOAARRRRRROOOOOUUUUUURRRRRAWAAAAWAWWAARRRGGGGGGHHHH amazingness holy shit what the FUCK is that. It's like space-jazz-opera almost Wagnerian in its scope. There's something very, very operatic about the way that they perform, especially the way that the three singers wander about the stage to take their solos.

And then some more ding ding ding whooosh BONG BONG BOOOOONNNGGG WOOOOOARRRGGGGGGHHH neow neow neow BOOOOOOOM.

80 piece drum kit (of course), bass, guitar, Rhodes, VIBRAPHONE (oh god, I loved the vibraphone) and 3 singers.

I'm not familiar enough with the catalogue to tell you what they played. But they did introduce the latter part of the set as being two new songs - one of which was AMAZING which started with a 10-minute sort of Philip Glass interplay Rhodes solo and then went all PHWOOAARRGGGHH towards the end. Then they said they were going to do the first song they ever wrote for their encore - title sounded like Kumbyah?

Really liked the records Andy Votel played between sets. Wish I had a set list. It was all amazing, but there was one that had those kind of big-beat 60s drums with swooshy synth noises that blew my mynd.

Oh, we got a nice little potted history in the programme. I'll scan it if anyone's interested?

also got the lps over the weekend. agreed on the smooth, polished sound and this being a generally good thing. its pretty evocative music, something like a jazzy lost morricone score to an italian 70s police procedural. or something.

initially this feels like this might be the best since Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré but i gotta spend some more time with it.

they sound like Setna now. who of course draw a lot from Magma. I mean this could've been on the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pjESCC_nkQ

just noticed that the new bassist is Jimmy Top, who I assume is the son of Jannick Top. or maybe the brother of Jimmy Pop??

I never thought that I would hear any music ever again that sounded like "Supertzar" off of Sabotage, like a mass offered up to the Elder Gods or some shit…but goddamned if that's not what Mekanik Destruktiw Kommndoh sounds like… one almost wonders if Tony heard Magma, much less this record…very very unlikely…

new video?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmgJkEajQUo

RIP Brian Godding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s0TwBJ8gf0

listening to the best album of all time, merci

i mean all-time for "otis" alone

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

I love the live versions of Otis. the studio cut is alright, a little subdued, which makes that high note Vander hits pretty jarring. imo Side 2 of Merci is incredible. in fact I think the whole album would be much better regarded if they'd just cut the first track.

you don't even have to cut the first track... offering's arrangement of it is really good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXXzXRI668M

I think Vander realised that trying to make Magma a commercial soul/funk band was Not Happening and took it in a jazzier direction with Offering, since the prog sci-fi album cycle approach was a little out of step with contemporary sensibilities by that point. Another thing that wasn't happening: replacing the best drummer in the world with a fucking LinnDrum.

Love Merci! "Eliphas Levi" is my favorite Magma song that isn't an album-length epic

eliphas levi is amazing, my standard take on "merci" is that it's the one where they "sold out" with a concept album about death featuring an 11 minute piece about the 19th century magus who transed baphomet which incorporates mccoy tyner's piano solo from trane's version of "my favorite things"

which definitely puts it on my list of "greatest sellouts ever", alongside albert ayler's _new grass_

also, i went to listen to this song and i get to see stuff i wouldn't run across normally, like this epically bro-y video about baphomet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOgeejjr2VQ

I Will Return is one of my favorite Magma tunes, I love when they just go full showtune

its too bad they didn't release a whole lot between 78 and whenever Offering started, they were going in a real interesting direction. what bothers me about Merci is that it's just sort of orphaned out there

I think Vander realised that trying to make Magma a commercial soul/funk band was Not Happening and took it in a jazzier direction with Offering, since the prog sci-fi album cycle approach was a little out of step with contemporary sensibilities by that point. Another thing that wasn't happening: replacing the best drummer in the world with a fucking LinnDrum.

― derek of the bailey (Matt #2)

the thing is that magma never really sounded like "merci", if you listen to live concerts from the early '80s the group naturally evolves into the "offering" sound as vander tried to adjust to the realities of life in a post-blasquiz magma. "merci" is kind of an outlier. as for the linndrum, it sounds great... when prince uses it. christian vander isn't prince.

idk i lost a bunch of my playlists when my old hard drive crashed recently... mostly it was curated grateful dead mixes (though i kept the "tc era dark star" epic mix i spent a month working on in late '21, thankfully... best mix i did that nobody will ever hear) but there's some great unreleased magma stuff. at least for the attahk era stuff you can hear the bourges '79 official release and bobino '81. anyway there's a great early tape of offering from late '83 that shows off the direction they were going at the time.

I think Otis sounds like a certain side of Magma but yea that's what's frustrating about it, it lacks any context

Just went through the track listings of the aforementioned Bourges '79 and Bobino '81, and yes there's basically an unreleased album there:

Retrovision
Who's My Love
You
Ürgon Gorgo
Zaïn

which all, depending on how long they could be stretched out, adds up to around 40 minutes. Plus there's a couple of demo recordings from the era that were on the "Kãrtëhl" album from a year or two ago. Given that they've spent the last couple of decades excavating old pieces that never had a proper recording I wonder if there are any plans to tackle this stuff before Vander retires/dies?