Rock et Folk No. 124 - May 1977

TOP

With the variation of the modes and far from unchained crowd, the man in black builds in the shade his imposing and solitary work.

JT: I am called Janik Top. I never knew my father, and my mother was washing machine. What wants to say that I always had to work to live, that I was never maintained. That was extremely important in my relationship with the life and people who, them, were not always obliged to look at reality opposite. At five years I started to take courses of piano to the musical college of Marseilles. At nine years I tackled the violoncello, and a year after, the direction of orchestra with Maître Andre Lhéry, who is perhaps the person who the most marked me on the musical and human level.
In parallel, I followed normal studies to the Thiers college. In class of second, I stopped the music, because I had had as example of people who had arrived at very an high level in the traditional one and who burst the flagstone… I thus continued my studies, and the music returned gradually, until I give up completely the maths for it, in third year of FAC. But I had completely given up the idea to make a traditional career, it for what I intended myself at the beginning. This moment, I started to listen to John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

MB: Front, you listened to only the traditional one?
JT: Yes, one can say that I like really the classical music, that it is Bach, Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, or the modern music: Varese, Penderecki,… To Marseilles, I had also followed the courses of the group of search for Frémion, with the Academy. Studies of sounds were made; all definitions, mass of the sound, the grain of the sound. One swallowed the musical theory of Schaëffer, which represents a considerable job. I was always rather rigorous with work. I like really that. Not imposed work, but personal work, improvement of its own capacities.

MB: Did that have to be a shock to listen to Coltrane for the first time, whereas since your childhood you were plunged in the traditional one?
JT: That rained me immediately. I found certain forms of the modern music there, though it is not completely exact, I realized some later: Coltrane had developed a whole very special method of work, even if some say still today that it makes noise in a sax. And there was something moreover, which depended on time present. It was music created at the time with a latitude much larger than in the classical musics or contemporary. Coltrane and Miles Davis really showed me what it was that to live the present in the music.

MB: How did you come from there to play of low?
JT: Precisely by listening to this music, I was immediately struck by the low one, I fell in love with this instrument. It is at the same time a very marrowy cushion and something of hard, which weighs tons and on what all rests. At that time I listened to much a disc of Miles Davis recorded in Antibes with Tony Williams, George Coleman, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter with low. Ron Carter really sat me, there was something moreover than the notes…

MB: Under which conditions you did learn how to play of low?
JT: There was a coincidence. Day at the following day I had to replace a comrade in a regional orchestra. I learned the repertory and I went there, and I had never played basic front. After, I withdrew myself during two years all alone with Aubagne to work the instrument. A comrade had lent a cottage to me which I had to repair to live there, in a great property belonging to its family.
Afterwards, I decided to go up to Paris, but before being able to do it I had to solve material problems as stupid as to pass the driving licence, to buy a car, an amplifier, and to solve a problem of cords which was completely personal for me. Indeed, I was accustomed to the violoncello which agrees C-ground-D it, at the beginning I granted low normally the semi-the-D-ground, but very quickly that degenerated into semi-ground-D it, which is really a hybrid agreement, until a house of Lyon agrees to manufacture C engraves especially for me. Since, I grant C-ground-D it. And then I turned some time around Marseilles with orchestras of ball to gather some small financial provisions, and finally I arrived at Paris with 2.000 F out of pocket. With the passing, I realize that does not make it possible to go very far. But finally, that occurred well. A comrade lodged me for four months with the eye, and a month and half after my arrival I played of the double bass and low electric with the French Comedy in the adaptation of the “Middle-class man Gentleman” of J.L. Barrault. There, I contacted some musicians. Exchanges of addresses. It is always similar when one arrives in a city, one breaks the feet with everyone. One does not stop telephoning because one turns like a rat died in his part. Of needle and thread, I found myself in Olympia to accompany a high-speed motorboat. There I will not quote any more names. And then at the end of one month I cracked. I expected very safe that, especially after the period of insulation and intesive work which I had lived. At the same time I did a little jazz with André Cecarelli, Henri Giordano, Jacky Girodo, and an evening I was with them with the Bubble when Christian Vander came to see me to discuss.

MAGMA

MB: You knew already Magma?
JT: I had seen them with the festival of Chateauvallon, into 72. They had made a speech which had enormously displeased to me in connection with people like Ron Carter who, said, were there to make an official reception than a jazz festival. A certain lack of tolerance had struck me. Today, I know that at the time it was because of Giorgio Gomelsky. When I met Christian it really did something, therefore I entered Magma. One worked, and gradually accumulated facts which, in themselves, did not have any importance. But there was a sum of misunderstandings that personally I interpreted as being other thing that misunderstandings.

MB: As being what then?
JT: When I do something with somebody, I always consider that it is there, opposite me. However, and there I speak in a general way, I was always struck by generalized selfishness. Certain things had not badly stirred up me, I thus stopped; two discs had been made: “Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh” and “Köhntarkösz”, on which there was “Ork Alarm”, my first composition for Magma. Musicalement that occurred well, one made five rounds in England and that moved. One could really have done something if there no had been human problem.
One can say, of course, that one should not attach importance to it, that the public of fout and is there only for the music. It is true. But in the operation of the group, for me, that has a very great importance. If not, one is together why? Me, I answer: for nothing. I know that there are very known groups where people are any smile on scene, and as soon as outside ready to balance chairs on the head. But that does not attract me in any way.
Then I continued to work on my side, and for the jazz festival of Nancy, Gomelsky proposed to me to assemble something. That fell well, I had just composed “De Futura”. However, in Nancy, he was announced: Utopic Sporadic Orchestrated of Giorgio Gomelsky and Christian Vander, whereas I had just spent six months of job on this trick. That gave me a good lesson: I always openly gave what I did, my ideas. Never nothing left under my name. But after one finds oneself “having given”, a point it is all. However in this trade, much of people know and apply celebrates it Chinese proverb: “When there is for two, there is inevitably for one”. After that I was to leave a disc, but there still were chicaneries on which I do not want to extend me. In February of last year, I re-examined Christian and one discussed much to remake Magma. I forget a little bit too quickly what occurs, but I consider that there is nothing statics, that each one can change its points of view and reconsider its errors. I make confidence, and I do not regret it. It is a very good school, just as to try to see the things as they are instead of digressing in philosophical speeches highly imbus of oneself on knowledge. However there is no speech, or at least one leaves them with those which are done to make some. But it is another history.

MB: How was held this second experiment with Magma?
JT: As I said it, very had happened very well on the level from the discussion. But I very quickly realized that something had not evolved/moved in our reports/ratios, namely that when one had decided to do something, it was necessary that immediately the opposite occurs. It is necessary to take its time when a new group is assembled, to act with parsimony and reason. The whims do not change anything with the business.

MB: You aim who?
JT: Once again, I speak in a general way. But if you me installations the question precisely, I can say that Christian is very capricious. I did not want to set out again on bases that I did not find solid.

MB: At the time of the concerts of the Theatre of the Rebirth, most of the public seemed to find the music very hard… .
JT: It should be said that the hard repertory was initially assembled. Personally I quite to the contrary played keyboards the “Music of the Spheres”, which is not a hard music. But it is necessary to replace all that in its context. If a producer puts on the front of the scene two chicks equipped with a certain manner with much of powder, light and perlimpinpin, it goes. But that has nothing to do with the music. To pass into radio operator it is necessary to realize pieces of 2 ' 30, cast in the mussel of the advertizing, so that the rate/rhythm humming and commercial is not broken. Me I believe that there is place for everyone. If somebody likes such or such pop-star, I do not see why it would not have it. One does not have to frustrate the amateurs of handkerchiefs and limousines. Otherwise one does something of élitaire, one says that one will impose it, and that somebody who does not like that will have passed to the furnace… It is not my design. But I believe that there are a public and a place for the music which I like to make. It will be with me to prove it, and it is a thing to which I will get busy. People are not animals, even if one wants to make it believe. It is nevertheless nutcase whom in private everyone acknowledges that the radio is disgusting but that it is necessary well that it is like that because of the others… If there are short pieces on face 1 of “Udü Wüdü”, it is only for reasons of this kind.

MB: What do you make in this moment?
JT: I work. I intend to reserve a surprise for the re-entry, or for the next year, I am not in a hurry. Because I made the decision, after the break of Magma, not to live music more, because that brings to make a product, and that when one has this product, it should not any more be released. It became an brand image. It is sad. The fundamental thing, it is the handing-over in permanent question, and it is incompatible with the “market”. I thus live of a work which I make of my better, but who am completely dissociated from my musical activities.

MB: Which work?
JT: I make meetings of recording in studio with “high-speed motorboats”. I will not quote names. It is a work. In margin, by taking all my time, I make the music which I like, and, when something is ready, I will make available it of the public. From here some time I hope to work with Henri Giordano, that nobody knows, but who is really a mountain, somebody of the gauge of Hancock.

MB: You started again to play of the keyboards?
JT: Yes. In my music there is, mainly two votes: one, anchored in the ground, which returns inside, it is the low one. And then it there with the voice of the cloud, keyboards. The mixture of both will give what I will do soon.

MB: Which music listenings you in this moment?
JT: I listen to music per periods. In this moment I réécoute much Coltrane. I decipher with the helmet all the “Mikrokosmos” of Bartok. I listen a little what is done, but does not find there really what I seek. It is too a period of gears, and not only in the music. The great proverb, it is: “More quickly, one understands nothing”, or “more extremely, it is not rather quickly”! All is a little free. Weather Report is perhaps the only group which can at the same time play and create a certain climate. I say well a certain climate, that does not go beyond. But there is an unquestionable climate.

MB: And among the bass players?
JT: That which impresses me more, it is Michael Henderson, the bass player of Miles Davis. Pastorius and Stanley Clarke are fantastic instrumentalists, but I find that something misses from the climate point of view of.

MB: Rock groups?
JT: I adore certain tricks of Stones, which really décoiffé. They had what I call the “grain”. But a long time ago that I did not listen to them. Pink Floyd at a certain time went in the direction of the climate, but I believe that now they were completely reformed with the commercial mould, with nevertheless always a small veil with far, behind, which is strange among people like that.

MB: Why “people like that”?
JT: What I wanted to say, it is that they do not have any technique, but there are people, like Hendrix, who have things to say and which say it with nothing, with any technique.

MB: McLaughlin?
JT: Tricks rained me, mainly when it was with Miles Davis. Afterwards, I liked less. I found that very cold. I believe that with Shakti it is found, I again felt this “grain” which it had front. But I would like to reconsider the technique: it is a tool which one must improve to the maximum, and it is all. It should not be permanently used with the detriment of the feeling and of the music, it is not necessary that becomes acrobatics.

MB: Magma?
JT: One forever last enough of time on a disc for really leaving the sound. In all the discs of Magma, there is a veil on the music, which filters energy. But it would have been necessary to spend six months on each one… Stevie Wonder spent two years well. It should be said that it has the means and that the musical careers are also financial careers.

MB: You love Stevie Wonder?
JT: I find that a little too perfect, a maximum. I speak about the interior swing. This said, its field, it is the song. Let us say that it transcends a mould in which I do not want to have to run me.

MB: There is an impressive series of discs of James Brown on your chimney…?
JT: Yes. When I started to listen to Coltrane, there were also the first
elements of the rhythm' blues, with there still a dominating place of low. I love much James Brown. On the other hand, which I do not include/understand, it is somebody like Hancock, which starts to make of the James Brown without James Brown. That wants nothing to say. Especially for somebody like him, which has a touch of incomparable piano. At the point where it arrived from there, with all the possible contacts in the musical world on a world level, it could all be allowed. But if it did all that to arrive from there there, I do not include/understand. Finally there is a whole style of music which one does not know very well if it is made for the boxes or the motorways: all times with the large case, a good small front of guitar, an easy topic that everyone will retain very quickly. Me, in my motor, I can listen to anything. But one cannot speak about the music without speaking about what there is around, of the general situation.

MB: Thus speak about what there is around…
JT: There, one comes to the bottom. One starts to realize that the bases of the theories which had course at the 19th century and which founded the economic advancement of the Occident were false: the ground is not infinite and its resources are not inexhaustible. Back machine should very quickly be made, to stop the economic gears which, as well, are reflected in the music. It is not any more one problem of distribution of the richnesses, but simply of life or of died for the man. That supposes a radical awakening which must start from each one. As for the concrete means of this disengaging, I do not know them very well. But I remain optimistic. One will need well that something is done, even perhaps for the last moment, if not it is the catastrophe.

MB: What do you think of the cultural movement which was grafted around the rock'n'roll, drug, etc?
JT: All the companies had their derivative. After the company of the wine, perhaps one goes towards that of grass. It is a problem of individuals. I believe that to some that can bring something, in others not. The danger, it is that people become increasingly unable to give each other a personal discipline. Many projects what they seek, i.e. power, in the others, which it is a pop-star or a guru. It is easier than to try to see itself opposite. I have very little real historical knowledge. What plunged me in these considerations, it is the experiment of my own life, and the discovery of another thing that the pure material gears, a certain work on oneself, the purification of projections.

MB: Whereas do think you of the speeches of Vander?
JT: Each one is free to want to become the Master of the world. There are many people like that.

MB: The direction of my question, it was: people who were in Magma with one moment given shared all his design of the things?
JT: Not, of course. You put the finger at the place where it is necessary. There was an immense contact between us, in spite of a total dissension on the bottom. There is only Klaus which is in the same history as Christian. To solve this kind of problem, it is necessary to fight against oneself, and I really wish in Christian to realize one day.

MB: For much of people, the music of Magma is a dark music, distressed…
JT: Me much was said that. I crossed very hard periods also, and at this moment that was to correspond well so that I felt. And then one can say that for two thousand years there always have been people who perceived a certain vision of the Apocalypse. And it is nevertheless them which made Art, more than those which spoke about the small flowers and the loves with water of pink. In any case, the only thing which counts, it is to say and do what one feels, to be in agreement with oneself.

MB: For “Köhntarkösz”, you had written “Ork Alarm”, for “Udü Wüdü”, “Ork Sun”. What: Ork?
JT: To try to render comprehensible a little what was my music, I had imagined that there was a planet completely mixed with ours: it was Ork, whose inhabitants were with the machines what the machines are with the man. But as they lived in another dimension, we could not see them. Of course, the transposition of the history, it is that we are the inhabitants of Ork, that we believe ourselves men but that we are machines. It is a very schizophrenic history.

MB: You said to me that you did not leave practically any more at home. Why?
JT: Because outside, it is the madness, the perpetual aggression, You are in the motor with 90, it is limited to 80, and you are pursued by guys who multiply the calls of headlight, make you cuts in front, etc

MB: And you are nevertheless optimistic?
JT: Yes. I believe that people reflect more than in the past, even if they accept conditioning because after all it is much less tiring. And my only wish, it is that peace reigns in the hearts…

WARNING: I heard bandage secret of Janik Top. The director of recording company which will refuse to sign a contract to him, and this at any price, will make a coarse error.
IT WILL BE TRANSFERED IN TWO YEARS. - (remarks collected by MICHEL STUFF).

Rock'n'roll and Folk n° 124 - May 1977

Rock et Folk No. 85 - February 1974

Magma is the orchestra of the Universe. Christian Vander is the chief.

The glance. More than the powerful arms of the beater inspired, it is the glance which strikes, which retains at Christian Vander, the organizer, the spirit of Magma. A glance of visionary at thousand light-years of modernity, the current one. Out-of-date, immortal magma? One would be tempted to believe it by listening to Christian Vander, priest enthusiastic of a very close Universe, stubborn militant of the going beyond of oneself. At his place, royalty to be joined it the concerns of the last of the philosophers of our time, giant solitary, without school and disciples: Heidegger.
Still relatively solitary - he also the organizer of Magma is anxious, tended. Anxious to be badly included/understood, badly followed, regarded as a hurluberlu. Tended in front of the aggressions that Magma underwent of all shares during years.
Whatever our level of perception of Magma, rhythmic, purely musical or mystical, even “fantastic”, it is necessary to follow closely the answers - even voluntarily partial - of Christian Vander.

PROCLAMATION/PREAMBLE/CONCLUSION (provisional) OF CHRISTIAN VANDER

“Nothing is created to be created, in Magma. One among the servants of the Universe, I wait until he speaks for me. When I feel that he wants to speak to me, I sit down with the piano and I wait. Then my fingers move. I cannot describe what I test. All the feelings of joy, infinite sadness, hope, all these feelings are so dependent and strong that when they penetrate in me, it in is not too much, I cannot any more but retransmettre than my human perception enabled me to receive. However, it is only the bottom of my heart. Only the Universe is also like a mirror, an immensely large mirror, and when in front of him I expose my heart, its image is projected on all the galaxies, the solar systems, the stars, and the intensity of its reflection is multiplied billion and billion times when it returns to me to flood of its celestial radiation.
The men want to always rise compared to an elite of individuals whom they chose, because for them, it is an achievement which to be above this elite. However it should be known that, on ground, we are nothing, the human being does not represent anything in the Universe, and, with the more high degree to which it can arrive on ground, he anything is not still compared with the Universe. If one seeks to rise above the human being, one will be tall compared to something of small. If his thought is turned, its glance, towards the Universe, one will be small compared to the incommensurably large one. They is so marvellous to be a piece of the Universe. II is generous, and when his offering is brought to him, however miserable is it, it returns it to us, in his measurement, proportionally with him. The Universe creates unceasingly for us and others. One should not be satisfied always to take to him, it is necessary to give him, it is necessary to create for him, because it is its only food.
We live thanks to him. This is why I dedicated to him for eternity my being material and immaterial. On ground, that wants to say Magma and Uniweria Zekt. I want that people know this: it is not for my ego that, for five years, I have taken this step with respect to them. It is because that must be made. Soon, I will not speak any more. Time will do it for me. “
CHRISTIAN VANDER.

“Magma, it is something of very simple”

Magma records from now on on Vertigo label and returns itself from there from its first English round. Is this thanks to Giorgio Gomelsky, your new producing manager/?
CV: Perhaps. But that would have occurred in any case, now or later. Magma was really awaited in England. One made a large impression, over there… Magma, it is really all the European folklore, Bartok… That appears very current. A little as what also certain musicians of jazz do today (Keith Jarrett) which introduce European folklores into their music. People, even of the musicians, say: “It is fantastic”, because they are not even able to recognize their folklore! II exists in our country a distracting musical deficiency: 70°/of the young French does not have any musical education. Whereas at eleven years, the Americans assemble already symphony orchestras or of Big Bands of jazz. And they learn the European music better than us…

English too? Therefore did you to them strong impression?
CV: Yes. But, finally, there is not yet of public for us in England. It is the same thing that in France, four years ago: it was or Claude François or Triangle, it did not have there yet of public for a music like that of Magma. It was created, this public, one created parallel circuits, sometimes making six hundred kilometers to go to play in front of forty people. That always cost us money, but we did not want to wait until people come to us, we want to go towards them. Then, by reaction, by the word of mount, others, more, came to us.

Same creation remains to be made in the United Kingdom?
CV: Yes. But that will go much more quickly than to France, because most of the time, the British have much respect for the music. In France, at the beginning, the public very often did not have any respect for our music. Now, it is the reverse: people have for us a fantastic respect, they want to really include/understand what occurs.

Finished, therefore, incidents of the beginning; Is magma, from now on, “installed”?
CV: Yes, and another public is appearing, different from the small core of supporters of the beginning: people of more modest, culturally less privileged mediums than “the elite”. Moreover, this public “of elite” often disappears the day when a group starts to make its hole, to have success: “They make concessions”, says one. I make a point of saying that we never made concessions, and that it is undoubtedly the reason why Magma succeeded in being essential on a certain public. Magma will never make concessions, will always play the music for the music.

Why this concept of “elite”?
CV: To indicate those which discovered us, which sought with more on our music, which returned several times to see us. Without them, people would undoubtedly not have understood today that the music of Magma did not occur to the first degree. It was especially in the studied medium that these people-there were found.

They in vain return several times, they will nevertheless not bore the mystery of the language of Magma, the kobaïen. Why the kobaïen?
CV: It was instinctive. The first time that I composed something - it was with the guitar, and I had never touched a guitar of my life, I sang it in kobaïen. I had some so much on the heart, which I had to say was so violent that these words came all alone.

It was thus the birth of Magma?
CV: Yes. I returned of a round to Italy; I accompanied Arthur Conley…

“I always played the music which I liked”

… and one had recommended to me to go to listen to certain groups of “progressive music” in Rock' Roll Circus. I found that had sophisticated, died, without life. Is the music, it initially the life, not? Coltrane played really its life on scene. I do not include/understand the half-measures. The music, that is not a relaxation. Certain musicians, in France, think due the music, it is a trade of lazy, think that in scene it is necessary, vulgarly,” of bursting themselves “, and left scene, leave their instrument for a jug of beaujolais wine in a box and, if possible,” a small chick “. Not me. For me, the music, it is the life. And death. Moreover, at the time, I left dead Coltrane, very had crumbled around me with his disappearance. Then in front of this invaluable group which seemed to raise the delirious enthusiasm of everyone, I said: ” Listen, me, I will assemble a group, and it will be really of the music “. They burst all to laugh… I had initially thought that after Coltrane, I could nothing any more make. Then I felt that it was necessary nevertheless to try to make live, modestly, the reason for which it had lived, him. I.e. to bring something to people. I always try to do it, I hope that I arrive there.

Wasn't Coltrane your only contact with the jazz?
CV: Not, I worked two years with Elvin Jones, one of the largest beaters with Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette. Elvin was the buddy of Bobby Jaspar, a Belgian flutist, today dead, that my mother knew very well.

You thus grew in the middle of the jazz?
CV: Not, at all. I was not raised by my parents, but by my uncle and my aunt, in a working medium. They listened of Verchuren to length of day. The only musical illumination that I had, it was when my mother came and a disc of outside brought to me. At six years, I listened to Stravinsky, Bach, Clifford Brown, max Roach. Very young person, I was sensitive to all this music. Perhaps because I am with the three-quarters of German blood, and for a Polish quarter… Lastly, very early, I felt that the medium where I had grown, that was not the life. And I started to play of the jazz, because my mother was in this medium. At sixteen years, I tried to make oxen in the clubs, under the sarcastic remarks of the musicians. It was very hard like environment. They always looked at their watch… That cooled me a little jazz music, I thought that they were dying in small fire in their ghetto. I had the same impression besides when I started to seek pop musicians “professional” to assemble my group: - You want to play of the sax in my group? - Yes, how much you pays? Or: - What is it like kind of music, your group, they are cool? I said: “That is enough” and I trotted myself of club in club, a little lost, without more seeking to make ox, and I met nevertheless people who wanted to play. Completely unknown, but which wanted to play: François Cahen, Paco Charléry, Francis Moze, etc

And of speaking kobaïen?
CV: Yes, there were all of them enough people who did not listen to the music or of those which played it but foutaient some.

The kobaïen, that resembles German much?
CV: Yes, that is due to my origins. The kobaïen, it is German, they are Slavic, Polish, that can sound a little Russian, some even Japanese time! But the kobaïen, that is not Esperanto. It is a very organic language and at all intellectual: one tries to find the word which defines really the object.

They are initially sounds, then organized in a vocabulary?
CV: Yes. I realized of this: in a climate given, when a certain thing is evoked, in fact always the same words return. Kobaïa, it is the same thing. I am in a certain climate, I connect the tape recorder, I compose (because, if the music of Magma is very structured, it is obvious that at the base it is impromptu) and I invent a whole screen… I start again two or three times, and in the same climate in fact always the same words return at the same times. Then I réécoute fifty or sixty times the band and, there, I know what want to say the words, undoubtedly. Now, there are approximately six hundred words of which I am sure.

“Our music, it is the pulsation of today”

Then, it is maturity, for Magma?
CV: Magma, for me, was born with “Mekanïk Kommandöh”. Front, it was purification. The preceding group had several directions; each one brought a little its claw, because we all were not absolutely of agreement on the philosophy of the group. One was diverted a little the original spirit. With “Mekanïk Kommandöh”, one fully returned there. I was likely to meet musicians who have the same frame of mind. Now, we all go in the same direction.

This frame of mind, how to define it?
CV: II is necessary well to know this: each one, in the group, must be achieved. Soon, I will not be any more the single type-setter. Everyone will compose. Each one must be able to be intended “to resound” completely at the others. But, for that, i1 is necessary all to be on a common basis.

And one reaches that point how?
CV: Only by one common frame of mind, a common philosophy, and because one works all in the same direction: spiritual disciplines. Jannik Signal, for example, works in a certain discipline since several years, Klaus in another, me in mine, etc But, before, each one played with people who “did not work” not.

Is this discipline, this “work”, what it?
CV: It is a discipline, a work which makes it possible to arrive “high”… Everyone can learn, but everyone does not learn, in fact. It is one of the laws…

?
CV: Good, there are two worlds: the objective world and the subjective world. Everyone can have access to the subjective world. Not very many is those which can reach the objective world, spirituality. II has there a work required for that. Few people do it, because that requires efforts enormously. This would be only to acquire the bases…

This work consists of what?
CV: That can be the study of Egyptian symbolism, for example. Currently, the spiritual side, it is a little with the mode. In what concerns us, that is not a question of opportunism. But, if one had spoken about that only four years ago, one would have taken to us for the insane ones. To plane, it is necessary to know the bases at bottom, all to control. II is not necessary to escape only by the cosmic forces, it is also necessary to work the ground, the telluric powers. II is necessary all “to give” before starting to rise…

And does this spirituality refer to what?
CV: Each one in the group has its discipline. In what relates to me, it is Egypt, Egyptian symbolism, but I am still far from having all the keys.

But still…?
CV: II exists manuscripts, there are things which are transmitted hand in hand or of word of mount in the objective world, whose subjective world is not aware. With these elements, one can begin work. For the study of symbolism, it is necessary to have keys. To know that if one reads in the Bible: “II killed the dragon”, that wants to say anything else: “II killed its ego”, for example. It is a whole work of simply knowing to read between the lines. One can start to include/understand only when one starts to know the symbolism of the things. From there, one can begin work on oneself. For example, me, I soon will have to go to the countryside to be able to work in-depth and start to control each thing.

To control what?
CV: To give an example, a Master (in a spiritual discipline) can take an extreme brick in a fire, leave it and pose it with ground. How did it do that, without burning itself? By accumulating the moisture of its body at the end of the fingers. But, to arrive from there there, it is necessary to know to feel each one of its arteries, each one of its vertebrae, to be able at each second to control its body with deepest.

It is a really possible thing?
CV: Of course. It is that the discipline. II has there also average, in the same way, to select the air which one breathes, to only take some what is healthy and to leave waste. Or this: a large Master settles outside, with a table, to eat: it rains… everywhere, except on the table to which the Master is installed! I know… For the subjective world, that appears completely insane, but it is true

And does that relate to people of flesh and bone, of 1974?
CV: Absolutely. And visible, moreover. But does not have there demonstrations! The rule, it is TO BE… when one “is”, that comes. II is not necessary to seek to be something, to show or want to learn anything with the others. II is necessary to be, to be satisfied to be. I know… that appears enormous, but that opens doors…

At which price, too?
CV: At the price of much of clearness, of total objectivity, permanent “dépassion”… it is very hard.

Therefore, of a certain asceticism?
CV: Of course. No drug, obviously. No alcohol. And I am ceasing smoking; the cigarette, it still is too for me.

And human relations, man-woman, man-man…?
CV: II no more lie has there, more possible hypocrisy. That can affect certain relations between man and woman, indeed. With regard to the group, there is no more no barrier between us, one always goes at the bottom of what one has to say.

But with respect to the “subjective” world, how do you comprise you? Surely not “naturally”?
CV: II is necessary to have a code. The terrestrial code. To know that, from time to time, a smile can slacken the atmosphere. Obviously, more one goes at the bottom, more one has evil to take part in the subjective world. Not that it is finally so difficult for us. That is especially for the others.

And with respect to the public? Do you make, will do you one or two steps towards him?
CV: Yes. With regard to the language, the kobaïen, there will be soon a small dictionary. For us, all starts with “Mekanïk Kommandöh”. Soon, one will play on scene a piece which leaves the base - the human robot, the machine - for gradually releasing “the spirit”. In the music of Magma, there is passage-key which remains of each one, internally. Each one must feel them with its degree. Initiation, that is done by stages. For example, with an Egyptian statuette in hands, a normal type will say “It is a very beautiful statue”; an initiate will see his proportions, the golden sections; a Master, it, will enter straightforwardly in vibration with the statue, the time to which it was conceived. The music, it is similar: there are the three levels.

Most accessible being the rhythmic one?
CV: Yes, the mechanical level. In “Theusz Hamtaahk”, the rhythmic one is relatively heavy to emphasize very air choruses - the second stage. But it is necessary nevertheless to tighten the ear to hear them.

And the third level?
CV: It is the connection of the whole: telluric power, plus the neutral power, the cosmic power.

And will the day when everyone perceive these three levels? II will this elite have there no more about which you spoke presently?
CV: Of course that not. I want to make mass an elite. However, in this moment, to my knowledge, there is so to speak no musician turned towards this frame of mind. Mahavishnu, I believe, did not pass yet by the stage of purification: to play a note, it is necessary fifty of them for them to make it pass. In the music, each note has its importance. The music, that can be four notes during five minutes if it is needed. II is not need to play about it of others if these are really felt, it would be superfluous. The more one works, the more one goes far, the more one eliminates the blah, the show-off.

Does that suppose a new type of relations with people?
CV: Yes, and more and more, we play on same level as them, “in bottom” of the scene, especially when this one is too high.

With a predilection for these parallel circuits about which we did speak presently, MJC, etc?
CV: Yes. And since the beginning. We often made six hundred kilometers to play in front of forty people. I repeat it, because it was a job of Titans. But it was the only solution to have the contact with people.

How you do you leave there? Eight musicians, few official receptions, few discs…?
CV: One did not leave oneself there at all! One had, and one always has debts. Our wives work. And, in this moment, we always play to pay our debts. I remember, at the beginning, I had evil to replace the three-four times rods which I broke each evening!

A Mirror

Why to have chosen Giorgio Gomelsky like managing?
CV: Because we needed somebody who is a little with the measurement of Magma. A manager, of course, but also somebody who has original ideas, a little insane.

II does Zao also deal with, whose founder is François Cahen, ex-Magma?
CV: Yes. And soon, there will be more and more groups which will play in this same frame of mind. It is not the pop one, nor jazz, but of ZEUHL WORTZ or UNIWERIA ZEKT: it is as that which should be called it.

Zeuhl Wortz starts to be recognized. It causes as many aggressions as at the beginning of Magma.
CV: It is a little a mirror, where each one can read the amount of aggression which it has in him, where each one can be updated. I never included/understood how one had been able to take to us for a fascistic group. When I think that I heard that during three years!

The policy, since one does speak about it, what that represents for you?
CV: Nothing. Nothing the whole. When a politician speaks, it is to be died of laughing. And they keep their serious! That will not be able to continue like that, people will awake.

If that is not the policy, what will bind the human relations, then?
CV: That could be Zeuhl Wortz, for example… But later. Not in the immediate future. In dix-quinze years, perhaps, it will occur something… Many people “will work”… I do not specify more, because one still will say to me: “That is not possible”.

In this near future, the spectacles of Magma will play their part?
CV: Yes. And even front. We will improve them. Y to add more the audio-visual one, ballets… Not “to only distract”, but to go further in the same frame of mind, so that each one really left there “upset” a little” in progress “…

All wouldn't that translate a certain will to be the “initiatory Master” of the sinning poor which we are?
CV: At all! If one IS something, if one is satisfied TO BE, people will come all alone. On the other hand, if one wants to be, that means that one already has in oneself the factor of destruction and that one will end up being destroyed, without being able to go further. When one IS, it is with perpetuity. Outwards even of Magma, important it is especially the frame of mind which will be created after us, or around us. If, by chance, it is that turns around me, I will have sought it, not wanted. I will have been satisfied to bring something, of best than I could.

In connection with the last disc of Magma, can I ask to you whether you listened to “Carmina Burana much”, of Carl Orff?
CV: Yes. I discovered it by chance, there are two years and half, and I found that fantastic! But, before even this revelation, all the music of Magma had been written already for choruses, a little air songs…

Curiously, there is in this moment an unquestionable renewed interest around the work of Carl Orff and, especially, around “Carmina Burana”.
CV: Yes, of course. And this, since one evening in Gibus, one passed the disc of Carl Orff before one in the concerts of Magma. Front, nobody had never heard it!

The music that you prefer, often say you, it is that of Magma. Why?
CV: Not by claim, in any case. Before discovering my music, I played the music of John Coltrane, because it was that which approached more my heart. But it was not my heart, it was it his. From the moment when the music is played which comes from my own heart, I cannot play, to like another thing, because then it is this other music which I would play. It is logical.

Remarks collected by François-Rene CRISTIANI.
Rock'n'roll & Folk n° 85 - February 1974

Rock et Folk No. 78 - July 1973

Rock'n'roll in Phrance
MAGMA

R & F: Above all, let us liquidate this history of fascistic Magma, I suppose that weighs you a little.
Klaus: It is a myth which was diffused starting from pewters: on the one hand coming musicians who jalousaient us because we work. It was a vague noise, at the beginning, which was propagated of word of mount, and some critical, by ignorance or stupidity, hastened to transmit.

R & F: But was that concretized how for the public?
Klaus: The misunderstanding started before the first disc. At the time, Philippe Paringaux had come to the one from our repetitions and had made a formidable, marvellous article for us. But he said in a passage: “Christian Vander rises and makes a speech which could recall…” ; as of this moment, people came to see us on scene only because of this sentence a little ambiguity. They thought: “Hold, it will make the speech in Hitler”. At the beginning, that amused us and we outraged the thing much: what could appear equivocal a time became clear. People badly included/understood this sentence of Paringaux: they have their small racks, then they draw the rack “Hitler”. They came to see us at the end in the concerts: “It is true that you are Nazis?” We, one marrait ourselves like the insane ones, but in fact we were taken with our own play: certain journalists started to spread themselves: “Fascistic, pretentious Magma”, without us ever to have seen nor heard. It is there that the first furious interventions took place to prevent our concerts.
Christian: We never stopped a concert because of them.

R& F: You always scorned to explain you on these circumstances. Nothing was regulated, on the contrary!
Christian: We do not have to explain us with people who come especially for exhiber and who have in any event never anything to answer us. If they are really too weak not to realize that Magma was the first to create a circuit in concerts apart from the system, a circuit with 7 F the place where the musicians come in residence, everywhere, which they cops will spend in Olympia between three rows wisely their tickets. There, they will see what is really Fascism. Now, I would like that one speaks any more this business because that has nothing to do with Magma, really nothing.

R & F: How do you locate the music of Magma compared to the jazz and to the rock'n'roll?
Klaus: It is very difficult to define it in these terms. If one must be something, it is an rock group, surely not a jazz band!

R & F: However, Vander is “a seasoned veteran of the jazz”, even if the jazzmen fulminate because of its treason.
Christian: Because I play the pop one, I play binary. The musicians of jazz are turned sour because they feel forsaken; hardly one or two clubs survived Paris, and those which trail there do not vary: it does not occur anything any more in jazz. They see that those that they adored more it there has four years, when I was going to make ox with the Cat Which precisely Fishes where me was called the twister (I was rather proud) because of my binary play, these play binary! They cannot understand that the music widens blow very, they are believed betrayed when Miles Davis, the standard jazzman, gives up the ternary one (shabada, pulsation jâse) with the profit of rhythmic nearer to the rock'n'roll, whereas they came just, after thirty years of effort, to put itself at the ternary one! Free, bebop, all that are schools, vaults, a very restrictive and contained corporatism. Then, which one does is not at all jazz.
Klaus: Me, I found a formula for Magma: front, we were a group of advanced rock'n'roll with skilful musicians who played of the advanced rock'n'roll. Now, we will make a spiritual music. If you want, it is a little the practice of the “advanced” rock'n'roll which carried out us there, but it is the spirit of the musicians which changed in contact with the music.

R & F: Therefore, they are these three years in ceaseless concerts which led you to understand that the music of Magma had changed, or at least, that it had been specified much in your projects.
Klaus: II progression without jolt of the music had there, but I insist: it is before all the spirit which evolved/moved; we want to make a music with “pure” people. Beefheart chose men who were close to him but which had never played only one note. We, we seek musicians who exceeded any technical concern.
Christian: How the new bass player, Jannick Signal, an initiate, wise!

R & F: Does that mean that the musicians of before did not seek to exceed the performance?
Klaus: Yes, I believe, but not absolutely. It was rather their direction which had nothing to do with the spirituality of Magma.
Christian: Moreover, if you want, we come all from very different cultural horizons, and it is precisely this ethnic diversification which created the force of this music. For example I am with the German three-quarter, a Polish quarter and Gipsy. Klaus, is to him Basque with hundred percent. That also avoids us falling into a poor parochialism: French music, rough red wine, erection of the statue of Guy fried Luxes and steak.

R & F: Then, where is the music of Magma now? For eighteen months the public has especially attended the gestation of “Mekanïk Kommandöh”.
Christian: One can distinguish three phases in the music from Magma: discs, “Mekanïk Kommandöh”, and afterwards. On scene, from now on, it is after “Mekanïk”, to put people in a position to receive the new music, which the third phase will begin. It will be based on hypnotism.
Klaus: Absolutely. The first time that we played “Mekanïk Kommandöh” was the revolving one towards this spiritual music about which we speak. Impossible to further go if one had not included/understood, felt…

R & F: Felt up to which point?
Klaus: So much so that people leave while crying, as that arrived to Belgium, with only the piano and the voices, so much so that they are not able any more to be rehabilitated with reality, than they are said: “One cannot live any more like that, it is necessary all to change”.

R & F: In this case, two possibilities contradictory: the music of Magma wants to be a drug, or a more or less clear call to the revolution.
Klaus: Yes, with a kind of interior revolution. The music of Magma, it is the discovery of the man. It is a music of change. If the music of our time is sincere, it becomes timeless. Bach and Beethoven one does that of their time, one can listen to them now very well.
Christian: We would have many things to say on the spirituality of the music.

R & F: While speaking about Magma, one can really say YOU?
Christian: Yes. Now there is spiritual communion. Direction of our music changed forever: front, we sought already a climate of hypnosis, but we were not, me especially, enough strong spiritually to reach it; i.e. to try to reach an image to be it perfect which governs us, which governs the universe and its inhabitants. This image we let us call it KREUHN-KOHRMAHN.

Remarks collected by MIDDLE-CLASS François DUCRAY and Guillaume.
Rock'n'roll & Folk n° 78 - July 1973

Rock et Folk No. 65 - June 1972

MAGMA: to save a music

Again, not enough world for the concert which Magma on May 7 gave, which was a surprise for me besides which thought that the group would have attracted more than three hundred faithful. The public included/understood of more than many musicians journalists who did not have to make increase the receipt. Giorgio Gomelsky, in the small speech that he pronounced at the beginning of the second part, did not fail to ironically underline the “serious one with which Philips had made the posting and the promotion in this concert”, specifying that Magma had reflected a long time before deciding to pass to Olympia. A speech from where it arose that Magma was those which were going to save the music of this country and to make known it with the rest of the world. While leaving, each one was to go “to carry the fine words”, each one “was to return to the musicians a little what the musicians give to their public, by helping them, by making known them around oneself, since that is not possible by the ordinary means, radio, clubs, TV”. Gomelsky also spoke about the success gained by Magma in the Houses of the Culture where the group of product regularly several times per week, which enables him to touch an interesting public since it seems definitely impossible to await any effort on behalf of the academics, that the music does not interest. Or, at least, do not seek they to make known it around them. Gomelsky is right perfectly and, under these conditions, it appears quite unjust to blame the musicians and the groups who must, to remain, to use the circuit of the balls. Their music ends up feeling some, their ambition blunts with long. It is without any doubt on this level which should be tried to include/understand the problem of the French groups: Martin Circus would not have required for the “Indians” if it had had to occur regularly in the universities. Magma presented a spectacle in two parts, the first being devoted, except for a piece, with the “Voyage towards Kobaïa”, hope to discover a planet where the relations between the men would be more normal. The group used all scenic space available and one saw the dark silhouettes very distinctly being detached on a screen where one projected the “logo” of Magma, this stylized claw. Motionless Francis Moze, Vander which, all its height dominates its instrument, and three coppers, aligned well, are the actors of a kind of pagan mass known as in a primitive language, succession of deformed sonorities, twisted by the throat of Klaus. It is however strange to note that these unknown words, when they are several times repeated of at a stretch, and that often arrives, take the consonance of words French, or English, and incomprehension disappears at the same time as any hermetism. Even if they are not included/understood, one is not disturbed any more by their strangeness.

The vocal ones are an element of most dominating of the music of Magma. They are not with the variation of the music but are integrated into it as well as the melody parts carried out by Cahen, Vander or three coppers. Each instrument, in extreme cases, plays part of agreement, part of a musical vibration, and it will be noticed besides that the music of Magma contains only little chorus. Coppers are thus in a rather vulnerable position because their function resides primarily in the execution of fronts which point out sometimes the sections of Stax. From there to think that the music of Magma is in the final analysis not as original as one agreed to claim it, there is only one step which one once does not cross after having heard the group in his life, for the reasons mentioned above.

The second part of this concert was mainly devoted to very long “Mekanïk Kommandöh”, the part which, until now, seems the most completed and most representative of the music of Magma. For this piece, the group was reinforced with an organist, a second beater and six chorus-singers, and the result passed very close to the imposing one. These ad infinitum repeated words, in harmonies which went up by successive stages, broken by formidable blows of battery, these choruses which went increasing itself, each one adding its own voice to it, produced something of splendid. Vander stopped it brutally, éructant the terrible judgment which the Tyrant utters, but the Beauty was born again from this crashing to pieces chaos, beauty not born with the excellence of an instrumentalist, as it is in general the case, but indeed with the coherence of a unit. Solos, there was all the same, and particularly interesting was that of the flutist Teddy Lasry who duplicated the sound of his instrument by singing notes which did not correspond exactly to those emitted by metal. It is certainly not a new technique, but Lasry shows that it has it completely comparable and never fall into the trap from the easy and spectacular effect. Vander is, spectacular, but it is only one consequence of its approach of the instrument, which it dominates, repeat it, unlike the majority of the beaters, very often hidden behind a multitude of cases or cymbals that they use only partially. The first part of its solo was devoted to the cymbals whose it explored all the possibilities, by drawing an infinite variety from sounds, according to whether it ran up, rubbed or cherished metal in such or such place, in such or such direction. So many and so that the impact rods were not distinguished any more this sound profusion from which were born from the melodies, of the true music. Then, using the skins, Vander still proved with more force its immense qualities of technician and the incredible control of its gestures, carried out by members completely independent but guided by a lucid will despite everything its madness.

A room as full as for Grateful Dead would have made a triumph in this splendid concert. Those which were present, in spite of their enthusiasm, did not manage to make vibrate the place, suddenly immense. It was a superhuman task, just like is that of Magma, groups which tries to save a music.

Jacques CHABIRON.
Rock'n'roll & Folk n° 65 - June 1972

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