KOBAĻA

Seventh / Harmonia Mundi REX IV / V

Martin Longley - Q magazine August 1993


Of legendary influence but rarely heard nowadays, Magma's motivating force is French composer/drummer Christian Vander, who employed a constantly shifting roster of idiosyncratic sidemen to chase his initial Coltrane inspiration. He then refused to duplicate existing musical terrain.

This debut double album from 1970 is an ambitious, complex jazz/rock/noise labyrinth, sung in an invented language and drawing on its own science fiction mythos, but tainted by dated progressiveness. Tar pit bass, tripping drums, bleeding fuzz guitar, waif melodies offset by propulsive outbursts, toy factory gypsy dancing, slaughtered-goat sax, a warped operatic underbelly provide impressions of a music with few antecedents and some good reasons to forgive the occasional pompous sequence.

Visit - Seventh Records


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