Rock et Folk No. 56 - September 1971

VANDER POWER/2

In a second part, a more precise portrait of Christian Vander, beater and leader of Magma, the “group besides”.

The sun fell, as with regret, involving in its fall some delayed rays which were ingéniaient to perforate the dense curtain of the forest. The sky, heavy and bad, seemed to scorn the land residences with the red tiled roofs, while the men hastened through fields towards their ridiculous dwellings, in a hurry to put a wall between their body and this storm which approached by thundering on the plain … Once again the lightning was going to strip the large trees of their bark and to tear off them from this fatty ground from where they drew their quiet force, disrespectfully throwing them across the gray and soaked roads. All the night during, from large trees were going to die, lying in water, their anguish sometimes crossed by the gleam of the headlights of a car whose driver, after many imprécations, should turn back … Demain, of the simple hearts would evoke the passage of the devil by discovering corns devastated by the wind. Tomorrow couples would wake up, happy to push the wood of their shutters against the stone of their walls. Tomorrow carefree children would throw small black stones towards the sky and would span the trees died while laughing. “Tomorrow”, Smart-Ass Rock' Roll Critic thought, according to the progression of the storm through the painted panes which separate its Territory from the rest of the world … idea the one following day did not seem, at this time, duty to impassion it in addition to-measurement; it once again raised the lid of the coral snuffbox where were usually deposited the synthetic candies which enabled him to exceed land realities when those became too foreseeable, but it had to go obviously: it was empty. II looked at Christelle, lost in another dream, which embroidered in the light of the old oil lamp. II wanted to be some, suddenly, to have made the negligence not to refill the snuffbox; there wanted to be some to remain nailed in front of the painted window which, when a flash tore the sky, made pass its face of the green bronzes with the mauve by successively giving him all the colours of the celestial pastels… “That of lost energy”, he had thought when his body had become very electric, just after the first crash of the thunder; this time, it could not imprison the energy which the night offered, as for the narguer, in long white flashes which cut out clearly on the gray walls of the village. Smart-Ass Rock' roll Critic did not feel that it was going to be necessary for him to have recourse to another planet, the too small Earth proving once again … It is, naturally, KOBAIA which it chooses, as he had always done it for this evening of autumn where he had heard, in the wind which howled on the city, following words: “Dewa trïwen ëk straïn da fennh dro zanka - Dusz wurdah dusz hamtaï …”. Smart-Ass Rock' Roll Critic moved towards its secretary, opened one of the drawers and a pile drew some from layers of which one was covered with a writing which was not his, but that of his/her friend VANDER; on this last layer one could read names like Görutsz Komputëhr Kommandeuhr (Klaus - Zaszpiak), Mekanïk Destruktïw Köhntarkösz Kommandeuhr (Rene Garber - Töht Würdah), and Mekanïk Extermïnatïw Zërëbrahl Kommandeuhr (Christian Vander - Teiusz Bïngöh /W ürdah Glaö …). Smart-Ass Rock' Roll Critic did not know that the moment had just concluded the article on MAGMA of which ROCK'N'ROLL & FOLK had published the first part a few weeks more early. II took its feather and wrote …

The night of July 8, 1970
This night, Christian VANDER dreamed a poem. Here the …
“GROUND
Eat your C œ ur, wood your blood, burns your heart
Faded tree which the blades of the sun tear
Aggressiveness is the fortune of your weak brain to the barks
What crushes the pillar of your centre
Aroma made thirsty for heredity which outline the spectrum of your violences
You were this imaginary blazing inferno deprived of passion
Who forged his crematory
Noise silence, noise silence
Time passed
Noise silence, noise silence
Its flood of waves flows inlassablement
II the universe, imperturbable floods
While sap of your poor life
Bead painfully on your bark revives
Noise silence, noise silence
Your life is stretched and time passes
Last drops of your sweat
Fruit of your constant anguish, escape from your roots
Your death greets you
Noise silence, noise rest
That you did not wait
Your spine howls its convulsion
Its cry is lost in the ocean of time
You burst without a sound
Why you do not speak, ashes
In the apocalypse of this interminable night
Where you sink forever?
Floods of time, floods of time
Do not forgive
Avenge these pure hearts with the translucent veins
Who only asked to breathe
Your misleading perfumes of hatred and hypocrisy
Ground, purging this first nothing!
Air of time as your fate
Is prisoner of the infinite cycle of the life
I sympathized, I sympathized
“AMEN “…

Christian VANDER.

The night of July 8, 1971
I was in Gibus. I had come to listen to MAGMA of which it was last engagement until mid-September. The afternoon, I had envisaged an interview and we had delivered ourselves without enthusiasm to the usual play of the questions and the answers; I looked at time to another VANDER which remained quiet, as if it were eager not to contradict the other members of the group, not to interfere itself between them and me … having noted, in my chronicle of MAGMA 2, qu ' it missed with the compositions of François Cohen and Teddy Lasry “a quality (violence) essential without which the step of MAGMA could be one day seriously blocked”, I discussed with them this question and they declared me that “their” violence supposed a certain development, contrary to “that” of VANDER. The conversation “did not burst”: it missed a kind of intoxication and our remarks remained enough pain-killers; at the end of the interview however, VANDER acknowledged me, when we were alone, that there were many very important points on which it had preferred to be keep silent and that we would have to discuss together in the near future …

The evening, MAGMA was on scene. The first passage of the group was rather difficult, because of heat which reigned; television turned and the projectors directed on VANDER did not arrange of anything its nervousness: it was to entrust to me later besides how much it had been painful to him to play under these conditions … And then it was the second passage, magistralement directed by VANDER; he had said to me during the afternoon: “II is necessary that you remainders this evening, you will see, one plays the new album …”; I remained and I thus could note at which point the leader of MAGMA lived SA music more intensely than that of François Cahen and Teddy Lasry. II was, for “Iss lanseï doïa” and “Ki ïahl ö lïahk”, this beater irreproachable of effectiveness which we are numerous already to appreciate, but never one could not say that it approached the paroxystic fever that one knows to him in his great moments. All that changed as of the introduction of “Rïah Saïhltaahk”, this splendid piece which it composed for MAGMA 2; one abruptly saw it becoming worse, more heinous and merrier, knocking skins and cymbals with an alarming precision, him it warlike whose rods split the air the such fatal weapons of a child who would have sworn himself to kill giants … VANDER, when he plays SA music, is all the opposite of these civilized beaters which make interminable demonstrations of their technique; in exercises of this kind, the technique it could however take pleasure not missing it since it gained it with people as Elvin Jones whereas he was old only fifteen years … But VANDER is a WILD BEATER more interested by the visceral impact of its speech than by smoothnesses of ornamentation such as the rats-jazzmen practise some which pullulate in the Parisian cellars. VANDER DOES NOT BEAT, IT FIGHTS …! The flexible chest, the untied wrists, it propels, the heinous features, the enormous machine which is MAGMA. Those which seem to assist best are Francis Moze, imposing mass with the closed face which imperturbably supports the group of its strong foundation; Klaus, of which the vocal parts gain unceasingly in majestic beauty and François Cahen, the pianist, capable of interventions of a rare smoothness. After the passage of the group, we found ourselves all around the tables of Gibus. I remembered the afternoon last … Francis Moze had said to me “When I finish playing, I have the fingers which tremble still a long time after” and Louis Toesca, the trumpet player: “Although I would be exhausted, I cannot sleep after having played with MAGMA …”. They were there, now, the members of MAGMA: Francis Toesca and the others, seeking which a woman, who glass; they had separated and occupied each one a table around which followed one another of the friends or relations come to tell them a mot. II had there only VANDER which was alone … or almost; we started to speak, very naturally: that made so much a long time that we had not on the occasion … II of it made me share of what obstructed it at MAGMA: the others which seemed to surround it and want to substitute their explanations for his when it wished SPEECH; Teddy Lasry which chahutait on scene, presently, right before the final one of “Rïah Saïhltaahk “… I it felt tired, VANDER; the rods/weapons were arranged in its bag, fixed on the back of the chair; ” I would like to record with of CH œ the USSR, of the percussions something of immense … Teiusz Bïngöh, it is not my name of war, it is my name of circus in order not to frighten people … You are the only person whom I appreciate in this trade; there is also Laurent Thibault; you do not know Laurent? II will be necessary that I present it to you … Ah! and then I must make you listen to my new band … “. We spoke, a long time, establishing a complicity as people alone establish some who meet the night in the boxes and decide to tell themselves while waiting for the small day. And then we were joined by Rene Garber, saxophonist-flutist black who made a time started from MAGMA; Garber, freak among the freaks, read us an extract of the French edition of the Weddings of Stravinsky and disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. ” If you speak about Rene Garber, says to me VANDER, I would like that you write that I regard it as the only musician who saw really his music … “. In the small hour we rolled, VANDER, Garber, Christelle and me in the car which spun along the gray walls …

The time of hatred
One afternoon of August, I re-examined VANDER; as soon as I arrived, it made me listen to its new band. “Theusz Hamtaahk”, of which it intends to make its third album. “Theusz Hamtaahk”, it is the time of hatred … That makes one year that he works on this tape; front, he had worked one year on that of " Rïah Saïhltaahk “… One can already say that with” Theusz Hamtaahk “the leader of MAGMA will strike a great blow; there is in this piece, of which I however did not listen to the principal part, of the superb climates: the music of VANDER slowly purifies … II has many projects, VANDER: first of all, this series of recordings for Barclay (always in Hérouville with Laurent Thibault) deferred to at the end of August; then it there with the realization of an album which will recall the history of the rate/rhythm through the ages, with study of the various techniques of percussion and summary of their progression; and then especially, there is this project of exploitation, and there if possible from improvement, from the quadrophonie by a process allowing to bring the listener at a stage even more advanced of its dependence with respect to the recording … This afternoon Rene Garber, Mekanïk Destruktïw Köhntarkösz Kornmandeuhr, passed; it currently forms a group which will be called Mekanïk and included/understood four pianists … In October, VANDER will start to organize the meetings of the Sect and many will be those which will realize (too late, alas that MAGMA is not only of the music, but ANOTHER THING also … NEW INNOCENCE, It IS DREAM MALÉFIQUE BECOMING REALITY. SUBJECTIVITY SE DOES NOT BUILD WITHOUT DESTROYING ITS OBSTACLES; IT DRAWS FROM the INTERMONDE VIOLENCE NECESSARY HAS THIS END. NEW INNOCENCE EAST the LUCID CONSTRUCTION Of a DESTRUCTION (Raoul Vaneigem. Treaty of good manners to the use of the young generations).

Smart-Ass Rock' Roil Critic did not take a new feather and signed …
YVES ADRIEN,
Hell Zërëbrahl
Endoktrinaïhr Kommandeuhr.
(with the approval of Kommandeuhr Suprëm).

Rock'n'roll & Folk n° 56 - September 1971