It was a sunny Sunday morning in late summer, very idyllic with peals of bells and mild air and swallows in front of the window. A Sunday morning to sizzle up an egg in the pan in the kitchen, with plenty of sunlight and to turn on the radio. What was aired sounded solemn, but it was no worship. Orffian chorus and brisk brass-riffs with plenty of rhythm and conjuring magic formulae in an incomprehensible language, formal strict ways of composing, bursting vitality and avant-garde excursions. This music was uncompromising, full of energy; it was new for me and mystical. This music was 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh', Magma's third LP, as I learned later.
This LP was also a first peak in the development of the group and it might be one of the best records of Magma. Brought into being by drummer Christian Vander in autumn 1969, on their first two records Magma's playing was very much Jazz orientated and also very much indigestible and fragmentary music. On 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh' the pieces of the mosaic fitted together for the first time in a complex and harmonic unit; not just appealing to extreme Magma freaks. Jazz - above all Coltrane who was a big example and idol for Vander - Bartok, Orff, Stravinsky, Slavonic folk music, and, of course, rock; these were the tesseras for this mosaic, a music always moving around on the narrow ridge between formal strictness, intellectual calculation and seemingly uncontrolled eruptions of sheer energy.
The tesseras for this mosaic were there, right from the start and each new record seemed to be just a further step to perfect the basic idea. And from the beginning it was very hard to express this basic idea in words, it was the listening experience that was essential for this music, a music of its own kind in terms of eccentricity. Klaus Blasquiz, the singer, who was with the group from the beginning, says: "Listening to a concert or a record of the group, to feel it, to describe the emotions, to experience all in common, that is MAGMA."
All those attributes predestined Magma to become a cult-band: One either had never heard about them, or was an enthusiastic fan. "Zeuhl", the symbol of the group was, especially in France, the identification of the Kobaïan fans. 1974 seemed to be the year for the international breakthrough. All pre-requisites appeared to be there. Giorgio Gomelsky looked after the band and provided them an international record contract with A&M. The Kobaïan story was intended to be published by 1977 in a nine-part cycle in which every three records were to form a chapter. The first chapter was closed with the first peak, with 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh', the first A&M release at the end of 1973. In 1974 the start of the second chapter was published with the LP 'Köhntarkösz', another milestone in the history of the group. 'Köhntarkösz' was a balanced and peaceful composition with stately piano and a lot of bass and organ-tendrils, a mystic-beautiful piece of music in two parts with a dramatic intensification. The response to 'Köhntarkösz' was minimal.
A&M overestimated the potential commercial success of Magma and after the flop 'Köhntarkösz', was not willing to continue the ambitious venture of a nine-record-cycle about Kobaïa. There were problems with the company, which soon led to a split-up, and also motivating MAGMA to turn away from the Kobaïa-cycle; it was a question of financial survival - as it seemed afterwards - regrettable but inevitable. Gomelsky stayed with Magma and the group got its own UTOPIA label on which the double album 'Magma Live' was released in 1975. The album caught very representatively the energy of a Magma concert. A further answer to the question "What is MAGMA?" can be found on the cover: "The music of Magma is like a mirror where everyone can see a reflection of who he is."
'Magma Live' seemed to become the last legacy of a disbanded group. Magma were almost nonexistent in 1976. Nevertheless the LP 'Üdü Wüdü' was produced at the end of 1976 "It was an interim solution", Vander says today. "There was actually no group when we recorded it. We produced it to get a new start. It is an extract of various pieces of music without a proper conclusion and it is also not typical for Magma. Besides, the sound is not satisfying. We had mixing problems. It is bass stressed, not enough melody is coming through. It was an album by Jannick Top, the bass player, rather than a MAGMA record ". There is nothing to add.
So, 'Üdü Wüdü' was a temporary solution and not representative for the newly formed group, which became a big line-up at the end of 1976. They toured France in January 1977 and on the 14th of May that year they played a triumphant concert in front of eight thousand people at the Hippodrome in Paris. Klaus Blasquiz said after the concert that now at last the same feeling as five years ago was back again, that Magma were back but now with more experience and a more confident background. And Vander characterizes: "In the past there were the big exciting enterprises which were important to Magma, but nowadays it's rather the ordinary things of life, the reliable detailed work." Actually, the Paris concert was one of those rare magical evenings that one would not forget so soon. Even the preparations were magical: The Hippodrome was a huge big top with a ring and all the trappings that go with it. A handcart in the centre, scope for a theatre-group acting with gestures and acrobatics to supply the visual components of the concert. Magma were playing in a big line-up: Clement Bailly (from Alan Stivell's group) and Christian Vander as drummers, Benoît Widemann (keyboards), Jean de Antoni, who had previously been playing with Patrick Moraz among others (guitar), Guy Delacroix (bass), Klaus Blasquiz, Stella Vander, Catherine Szpira, Lisa Bois (vocals) - a line-up like on the earlier LP's.
From the very first minutes of the evening there is concentrated suspense: The girls sing a formal strict, nearly classical intro to a long puristic and more and more insistent yet relatively restrained version of 'Köhntark'. The energy breaks through in some shorter titles, among them Jannick Top's 'De Futura' from 'Üdü Wüdü', which was more convincing here than on the LP. The first hour is more impressive; it is powerful and sovereign, but not enough to make you leap out of your chair. The intermission is bridged by presentations of the theatre-group; it is almost unnoticed that the members of Magma take their instruments, one by one, and at first only provide the background for the theatre. The theatre-group concludes its performance and only now does one become aware that the musicians up there are already playing like hell. Suddenly a fire-eater goes into action and is taken over by trapeze artists beneath the roof of the big top. Then, the theatre-group again with a rock-performance - and with all this corresponding to the happenings in the big-top, a hypnotising fascinating music, striking, rousing, sensitising for the happening which is a psychedelic attack on the senses, like in the good old days. Magma played for almost four hours, and I regretted that it was already long after midnight.
The routine of more than 800 concerts (500 of them in France) during the first seven years seemed not to have had a negative impact, quite the contrary. The intensity of the concert did impress me even more as I learned that all this evenings compositions were rigidly fixed, that they played without any free improvisations (Klaus Blasquiz calls that "masturbation"), with total concentration. And once again Klaus: 'Magma were always the same and will always be the same, although each LP was different." Christian Vander: "It is always a different picture but the story is the same."
The newly formed group had proved in Paris that Magma were as vital and fascinating as ever. In spite of that, there remained a lot of questions. France became too small; still it does not offer any perspectives. ("Meanwhile we played in every conceivable village") The group would attempt to realise future record projects independently from big record companies and to gain a foothold abroad, especially Germany. That is not easy and the group is well aware of that; there was a lot of nervous tension at our second meeting in Essen, where Magma were to play at the big Juso-Festival after Volker Kriegel, Embryo and RMO. This gig, planned for 10:00pm, fell through, due to difficulties in organisation. Volker Kriegel's set lasted until 3:30 am. I did not like this very much since I had come to Essen especially for Magma. At least the interview in the afternoon worked out, even under aggravated circumstances: my poor knowledge of the French language and a helpful interpreter from the fashion branch of our journal.
We talked amongst other things about the latest LP from Magma, a cross-section of live music through different periods of creation of the group, amateurishly recorded, a collection of samples and try-outs which was deliberately not issued until 1977, interesting only for the really confirmed and archivist fans. Christian explains: "Inedits' is a pirate with old material." So, was it a stopgap after all? Yes, but in Germany 'Inedits' would probably not be released anyway, but soon there would appear a really new album with new music. Until then the gourmet had to be patient but he could try to shorten the waiting period by attempting to get a copy of two very beautiful, although a little eccentric Magma records: 'Tristan et Yseult', a movie soundtrack and a jazz-rock album which was issued as UNIVERÏA ZEKT.
By the way, Christian Vander thinks the German audience was better than the French and he explains thus: "It is more flexible, not so fixed on categories; it is open for folk and jazz and rock and classical, and this is important to Magma because we are playing a mixture of all this." Hopefully, Mr. Vander is not too optimistic! But, how did he say? "We have a strong will for conquering!" And finally: 'Magma are for the life, for the death and for after the death. You have to watch the restless nights".