Magma - Biography
By Oliver Hall
Magma is a French group led by drummer Christian Vander. Magma’s music integrates elements of spacerock, jazz, progressive rock and orchestral music in a new genre called Zeuhl. The music is conceptually unified by Vander’s science fiction mythology. All Magma songs are sung from the point of view of the Kobaïan people, who will, according to the stories elaborated on Magma records, emigrate from Earth to another planet and return years later; for this reason, all Magma songs are in Kobaïan, a language invented by Vander. In a 1995 interview with George Allen for Perfect Sound Forever, Vander said, “Back in 1966, I had written a piece and I was already in a band with Bernard Paganotti, who became a bass player. Already, I was searching for the right word. The tune I wrote back then was called Nogma. I was looking for the word Magma, but didn't know it was what I was looking for. One day the band didn't have a name at the time, and they were standing in front of a fairly well-known club in Paris. The club management told me if you don't have a name, you can't come and play tonight. So we went for coffee, at the shop next door. I thought deeply, you know, and the word Magma came out. At the same time, I founded Univeria Zekt. I wrote this down on the receipt from the coffee shop and kept it.”
Magma’s first album was Magma (a/k/a Kobaïa, Philips 1970), followed by 1,001° Centigrades (Philips 1971). Both are jazz-rock albums that Magma fan Julian Cope has compared to the easy fare of Blood Sweat & Tears. Singer Klaus Blasquiz does most of the singing, and was, between 1969 and 1978, the band’s only continuous member other than Vander himself. Univeria Zekt’s “The Unnamables” (Thélème 1971) is Magma recording under a different name with a slightly more soothing sound.
It is strange that Magma’s third LP, Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh (Vertigo 1973), was the band’s first album to be released outside of France, because its alien, martial music sounds closer to future records by Einstürzende Neubauten and the Residents than it does to anything from the palatable jazz-rock genre; but this was the album picked up by A&M for release in Britain and the United States. M.D.K., produced by former Yardbirds and Soft Machine manager Giorgio Gomelsky, is accompanied by a lengthy libretto in Kobaïan. The album introduces Christian’s wife, vocalist Stella Vander, who continues to perform with Magma, as well as the distinctive bass playing of Jannick Top. M.D.K. is the third movement of the Theusz Hamtaahk (“Time of Hatred”). The second movement was originally released under Vander’s name as the 1974 soundtrack to the movie Tristan et Iseult, though its official title, Wurdah Ïtah, has been restored on subsequent releases, and the first movement, itself titled “Theusz Hamtaahk,” did not appear until the live album Retrospektiw I+II (RCA 1981).
Vander has said that, when he writes for Magma, it is as if the songs are being dictated to him. He shed light on how he composed M.D.K. when he told George Allen, “The music and the lyrics come up at the same time. If I am singing, and if it has to be in Kobaïan, they come up in Kobaïan. Sometimes there is a word that is maybe French or English and I leave it in because it is there, and it's natural. The lyrics come at the same time, parallel to the music. For pieces like Mekanïk, they were not written in one shot or one session. I had to run a tape recorder to be able to capture it instantly—it goes very fast. I sing with new words that I don't know, and when I am improvising further, the same words come back, even though I don't know them. But I didn't learn them, they impose themselves on me.”
Köhntarkösz (Philips 1974) consists mainly of the rhythmically and harmonically complex and largely instrumental “Köhntarkösz,” split into two parts. Jannick Top, who contributed bass, cello, vocals and piano to Köhntarkösz, is absent from Hhaï/Live (or Live Köhntark, Utopia 1975), on which Paganotti plays bass. Hhaï/Live also marks the debut of violinist Didier Lockwood with Magma. Top returns in glory on Üdü Wüdü (Utopia 1976), on side two of which the ultra-heavy, nearly 18-minute “De Futura” centers around Top’s bass. Attahk (Eurodisc 1977) was the last new studio album Magma would release until Merci (Jaro 1984), which left the Kobaïan saga behind for English-language songs about Otis Redding. Numerous live Magma recordings have been issued in the years since, among them the Retrospektïw series (RCA 1981) documenting Magma’s 1981 performances of their canonical material.
Vander pursued solo projects and worked with other groups during the 1980s and 1990s, and he resurrected Magma as a live band in the mid 1990s. In the year 2000, Magma marked its 30th anniversary with a live performance of the Theusz Hamtaahk trilogy, documented on the Trilogie au Trianon DVD (Seventh 2001). Köhntarkösz Anteria (Seventh 2004), a new recording of a piece written around 1973 but never released, was the first new studio album from Magma in twenty years. Magma continues to tour and perform.