BF: Magma is formed of entirely new musicians...
CV: "One thing is essential: before they entered the band, some of these musicians were playing Magma music. Thus, Bernard, the bass player, was with Cruciferius Lobonz, a band of which I was part. We had set up pieces that were similar to Magma's and we were singing in another language. Benoît Widemann comes from a very similar school too. It is a whole new generation of musicians, which doesn't come from Jazz like that of yesteryear, and which goes much farther. I hope that the band will last. Everyone is putting in maximum energy. Incidentally, I can't dwell on this topic: let the musicians work silently. It is through their deeds that they will get talked about. I know that they have faith."
BF: Many people have gone through Magma...
CV: "I do not demand any discipline from the band members, but I know that, without discipline, they won't be able to stay. I didn't create Magma - let me use vulgar terms on purpose - to "have a good time", and I don't hate anything more than these musicians for whom music is a first-degree physical discharge. And who fulfil the exact job that the audience is requesting from them. It's very hard to admit that one has nothing to say. Now many people who played Magma's music thought that they were composers, creators, just because they were part of Magma. Unfortunately, in their private life, they weren't the same as on stage. For my part I don't change, because the thing is neither theatre nor cinema. Music is life. Once they've left the stage, some are jolly good fellows. For me, it is for life and for death, I already said it, even on the record. I was however pleasantly surprised by people like René Garber, Faton and Jeff Seffer, who persevered and of whom I sincerely thought that they would drop it after Magma. Same thing for Teddy. As to Jannick Top, it isn't just faith that propels him, it is Life. And few people live... I'm making music because there's something wrong on Earth. However, music itself is nothing in comparison to the motivation that breeds it. If Earth were spinning the way it should, I wouldn't be making music; there would be no need for it. I had a very tough childhood. If I were talking about my life, about my life only, my music would be sad: it would evoke my suffering, which isn't yours or that of the others. One would listen to me with a trifle of compassion, as if to say "My poor fellow, you've been unhappy..." But it wouldn't go any farther as far as fulfilment is concerned. Therefore, if you must talk, evoke not YOUR life, but LIFE, and why it must be the way you imagine it. Talk about absolute suffering. As far as you're concerned, you have nothing to say, and if you talk about yourself, you will remain in the dimension that you gave to yourself. Start from the notion of nothingness, you are NOTHING. There only, you can get access to the BEING, become a small fragment of infinite greatness. One must be the instrument of the universe and put oneself in receiving state. The little that it will entrust you to transmit will be so huge in comparison with the nothingness of everyday life, that music will be transfigured. Music remains vulgar as long as it is full of your own self. Magma's art isn't perfect: the least beautiful things are those that I added. Thinking for instance that two more notes here and there would improve the general effect. Now this is wrong.
BF: Eh???
CV: This means that music must be weeded out to extremes. Each note weighs twenty tons. Why billions of notes? Most guitar players play fifty of them in order to convey two. But if they channelled the energy in these fifty notes so as to crystallize it into two, music would have a huge weight. People go and see clowns on stage, whom they boo if they aren't satisfied, holding months of work in contempt with a laugh. For the musician who puts all his life into his music, it's very tough.
BF: Did you often see that?
CV: Often, yes. Nevertheless, even a Saturday night drunkard can be touched by supreme beauty, even if it seems to be inhuman, because everyone has the same heart. By giving out the energy that you must give out, you can touch everybody. And if we don't currently manage to do it, it's because we aren't ready. We applied ourselves to the extremely difficult task of creating total music. I very well conceive that listening to Magma requires a huge effort, taking into account the brainwashing to which people are submitted everyday. But the facts are here: at this moment, many people come to see the bass player's socks. And some musicians enter this process, which takes away from the public the "spirit" of what music could be and of the essential thing for which one is on stage.
BF: Not only some musicians. Everything else...
CV: I'm not tackling the remainder for the time being, only my domain. There are however people whom I can't touch through music. So, only my "counterpart" in another part, theatre for instance, will be able to venture to thrash theatre hypocrites like I pester musicians to death. The main point is to have a speciality, to push it to the limit. One can't cultivate two practices simultaneously; it's ludicrous. Having a hobby, maybe yes. Leonardo da Vinci devoted himself to sciences, but what one remembers from him is of course his painting. Thus I can study mathematics to take some rest, but I'll never go and talk with Einstein. Well, in my art, maybe one day I'll be the Einstein of drums?
BF: Are you reproaching the audience who have just watched the bass player's socks, to be the way it is?
CV: This is the big problem. If that audience could, thanks to a concert by Magma, become aware of its condition, then I would have accomplished a billion steps. Anyway, I believe that there's a stage where one lives so intensely that it gets projected onto people. One example: if we put on helmets for the concert, and a member of the audience approaches and notices that said helmets weigh thirty kilos, then he will sound himself out, he will say to himself: "So, this isn't theatre, they really bear their burden..." In a theatre play that I saw one day, an actor was pricking himself with needles and was bleeding. Usually, theatre props are coarse; knives are made of plastic. Well, there, he was really bleeding and he was drinking his blood afterwards. The intensity of the climate... French musicians are parasites who are killing music. You just have to look at the names of those who were there five years ago and who were supposedly "living" their music, like Bob Brault of Martin Circus. All or nearly all have disappeared; have cracked up because they had nothing to say. And naming names doesn't scare me. Of course, the others, the true musicians, are more interesting. Thus we play in Lyons on the 8th of April with a band the name of which I unfortunately don't remember, but which I believe has the spirit. Without any doubt, a few guys are acting in their own field, but nevertheless I know virtually nobody. And above all let's not talk about dead people... French musicians have been very tough with me, except a few like Doudou Weiss. They are shop girls. They are NOT, they are NOTHING. Or clowns who only think about making some dough and who "make commercial trash" when things are getting bad. That is the true problem. I can't understand how one can compare music to clownery. Whenever a musician works unceasingly, he is taken to task for becoming sophisticated, and if he goes beyond some primary degree, he is taken to task for creating elite music. One can't owe true musicians a grudge for loving their instrument to the point of working it all day long in order to give the best. But people like what's most accessible to them, who are unable to close their eyes and to listen to the music for what it is, and to try to become pervaded with the feeling that it wanted to give out, with all the difficulties that this represents.
BF: Nevertheless some types of three-chord music are able to touch deeply; blues for instance.
CV: The guy who plays the blues talks about himself, about his suffering, and he will only touch people to a certain degree.
BF: Are you satisfied with your work with Giorgio Gomelsky?
CV: OK. To begin with, we should have done in two years everything that we did in five, in a normal country in front of people with average sensitivity. The level and the musical culture in France are absolutely null. Five years to get there! Giorgio did a good job in creating this circuit with us. Unfortunately, this very circuit which we forged through a thousand bad scenes today serves to present bands which kill our basic motivation: we created this parallel itinerary in order to defend true music, that of ZAO for instance. Now I notice this: our work is being spoiled by bunches of formless bands, after we've sweated blood for years. Those who are playing at this moment must feel alluded to. Save Magma and ZAO, nothing bears the shock. We are nevertheless responsible for this state of fact, to some degree. In order to withstand the shock, the circuit couldn't comprise Magma ONLY, of course. Other bands were needed, of similar quality, and since they were impossible to find, one went down into the worst debility, into kinds of music that we had fought. (I'm talking here about the professionals, the known people.) We struggled for a music that could go out of Europe, without being influenced by Anglo-American music. Americans and Britons laugh whole-heartedly when they listen to a French band, and I agree with them: these people play Anglo-American music, but they feel it less since it isn't theirs; furthermore, such a process pertains not to single copying, but to double copying. Americans know folklore thoroughly, much better than Frenchmen themselves. Thus Zappa fetched harmonies in Bartok and Stravinsky and he didn't invent anything. But we don't even know our own music!
BF: Magma has many new pieces: 'Rain' ("La Pluie" – Ed.) for instance, which one could hear at the Roundhouse in London.
BF: 'Rain' - Lïhns in Kobaïan - is a piece of everyday life, a piece with a "normal" dimension, different from big creations like 'Mekanïk', which evoke extreme joy or pain. I am looking for immortality and I am working up to perfection. I improvise the thread on piano, and when I'm in a receiving state, it comes. Sometimes a few vulgarities remain, which take days to eliminate. When I decree that the piece is finished, it's because I estimate that it isn't vulgar any more. However, six months later I've still covered more (spiritual) way and I notice new impurities. Then I correct again. Thus I'm still working 'Köhntarkösz' even though it's finished; I'm trying to improve 'Ptäh' too. I have to tell the story of Köhntarkösz. It is merely the introduction to a piece which will cover three albums and which will be called 'Ëmëhntëht-Rê'. It is the story of a man who discovers the tomb of Ëmëhntëht-Rê. He goes down into the tomb, arrives in front of the door, and hears the singing of the angels for the deceased. He opens the door, raises the dust of the tomb, untouched for millenniums, which enters him through all pores. He receives the visions of Ëmëhntëht-Rê's life, a total vision. He faints, and Ëmëhntëht-Rê's' whole life is revealed to him. (We are spectators. Two pianos play alone, without or almost without drums; it's the moment of initiation.) When the man wakes up, he only remembers fragments which he holds in disorder and which he tries to join together. He will need a whole life to reach the stage where Ëmëhntëht-Rê was, who nearly let Ptäh come to life again, i.e. to make him appear materially. For the latter had a mission to accomplish on Earth, but people who didn't want to see him reach his end murdered Ëmëhntëht-Rê. Ptäh was therefore not awoken and he is still sleeping in the universe, until somebody again discovers the formula to wake him up. Ëmëhntëht-Rê had almost succeeded. Köhntarkösz has a whole life to try in his turn. This non-symbolical story is identical to that which we lead in parallel with Magma.
BF: Will one succeed in awaking Ptäh? Is this the ultimate goal?
CV: It's the penultimate. Ptäh will decide on the ultimate one, starting from the principle that I already know his decision.
BF: What will it be?
CV: I can't say anything. Everyone must discover it. Then one will be very close to awaking him. For my part, I am aware that we must awake Ptäh, and my goal in Magma is to prepare people. I also have compositions ready for four years from now. Within three years people will be able to "receive" them. This will correspond to the time when we'll be able to further widen the music, thanks to more elaborate stage work. I have ideas on this, of which I can't talk for fear of seeing them copied and vulgarised towards different ends. The plans are rather extraordinary. And if we aren't doing anything at the moment, it's because I don't want it to possibly resemble theatre. I will also have accomplished a spiritual work on myself; I'll be ready. For five years, only the embryo of Magma has been in existence. Maybe today Magma will build itself up in the bosom of this new band. For the moment Magma has only defined the necessity of its own existence. In two or three years, people will understand better and better, and within five years they will be ready to start work themselves. Then they won't only come to listen to music. They will come partly for the music and partly for a rite. After that, there will only be the rite, we will make a temple out of each place where we'll be playing, where the men and women (can one still talk about audience?) will come in procession. There will be concrete work to do. We will ask such or such to pronounce such word in order to provoke such reaction. I won't be alone. Uniwerïa Zekt will undertake the same thing in all domains. After coming to a concert, people will experience the irresistible need to go back there, and not only for the music. Without knowing why, they will already be in it. FOR LIFE, FOR EVER.