I've certainly sorted out some tricky records to review this week. Describing Magma to someone who hasn't heard them, ranks on a par with trying to explain test cricket to a Korean peasant. On the other hand, if you have heard them you'll either love them or hate them - I can't believe anyone could remain indifferent to such startlingly original music.
Let's have a go at covering what they do anyway I suppose the nearest thing is to say that Magma = Contemporary European "serious" choral music + rock accompaniment - but that's not really right either. For a start, I've heard no contemporary choral music that sounds as passionate yet as alien as Magma's vocals. On a recent "Top Gear" we featured two pieces that the band had recorded specifically for the programme. One lasted half an hour, the other twenty-seven minutes, and I found the concentration required to absorb such dense and challenging music over such long periods very hard to muster.
One of the numbers was called 'Köhntarkösz' and that's the title of the LP from which this remarkable single is taken. The dominant musical (as opposed to vocal) instrument here is the electric bass and I can't recall ever having heard the bass played with such ferocity and attack - it maintains this ferocity throughout the single and presumably throughout the LP. A tour-de-force. Electric guitar is featured too, initially distant but growing in intensity until it howls like a siren over the close. Magma is a 21st century visionary band and a single by them seems something of an anachronism. Try to hear it, if only as a taster for the LP.