This 2-CD set contains of Magma going into overdrive at the
Marquee Club in London on March 17, 1974. The band were promoting their third
studio release, Mekanik Destrutkiw
Kommandoh and were two months to go back into the studio to record their
fourth album, Kohntarkosz.
This is a very interesting rare archival recording. It’s not
just you can close your eyes and being at the Marquee while watching Magma
bringing the styles of Stravinsky, Opera, Jazz, Classical, and Progressive Rock
to life with the Kobaian language, but having the power and the glory to
witness something special with this that will make your jaws drop from start to
finish.
The scream of “HAMATAI!”
kicks everything off with the work-in-progress version of Kohntarkosz. The band begins with this intensive crescendo that
erupts like a cannon blast for the audience to embark on going into the
Egyptian tombs of the god himself, Emehntehtt-Re. You can imagine the crowd is
stunned and in awe of hearing the strange language being brought to life for
them and knowing this is a concert they will never forget.
Claude Olmos comes center stage as Klaus Blasquiz’s vocals
reaches the higher arrangements with his vocals as Claude’s guitar goes into
some harder double-edge swords on a bluesy sound and removing those spider-webs
inside those darker tombs. Graillier and Bikalo share this alarming yet ominous
Rhodes-like tunnel to make you be on the look-out for some of the traps that
the gods might have done.
Christian himself follows in hot pursuit to create more
danger as he puts you on this tightrope as pounds those drums like Elvin Jones,
Buddy Rich, and Billy Cobham combined into one. The last six minutes become
even more dooming and intensive as Vander’s screeching vocals make your skin
crawl while Claude does this Fripp-like movements for a brief second. But all
of a sudden, it becomes a climatic frenzy as they come together to bring the
club down to a thunderous cheering and applause.
Sowiloi is a
mellowing ballad that has this feeling of Soft Machine’s Slighty All the Time that Magma tip their hats to. It then switches
into a sudden change at the last two minutes as they go into a frenzy attack to
go full throttle on yo’ ass! Sons et
Chorus de batterie (Ptah) which translates to Sounds and Chorus of Drums, this gives Christian Vander a chance to
sweat his heart and soul out on those drums.
It is tribal, pounding, swing, and some crazy improvisations
that Vander himself brings to the audience. He is the mad scientist on the kit,
but also a conductor. The last five minutes and fifty seconds in where he scats
and sings in his operatic form, there are moments where he would go into this
scale format as the rhythm goes really fast. There is another sequence where
when he would hit the snare drum by the time he scats he would sound like a
computer going haywire.
And after the explosive 25 minute improvisations, the
audience went nuts and applauding for more of them to do another set. Jannick
Top’s composition, KMX BXII Opus 7, is
one of the rarest live recordings for him and his bass to fit the biggest
pieces of the puzzle. Now you can hear some of the bits of the Kohntarkosz suite in there, but when Top
plays, the band gives him free-rein. He uses the fuzz-tone sound and go into
some heavy jazz-rocking lines that makes it sound like a rapid firing machine
gun.
He plays through the spiraling staircases between Pekka
Pohjola, Stanley Clarke, Geezer Butler, and Jaco Pastorius. As Jannick raises
up the heat from the temperature, it goes up and up. I just wished in that
moment that the crowd would have clapped along to the rhythm and tell him to
keep going.
Also on here is another work-in-progress composition that
was performed at the Marquee was the first movement of Theusz Hamtaahk. There were some parts of what Vander had also
written for the trilogy and some aspects for the bizarre 1972 French Film, Tristan et Iseult, and a part of the
album, Wurdah Itah. While the first
movement wasn’t in its final shape, you could tell that this was where Vander
wanted to go with the piece.
While the first movement was performed on a BBC Sessions
they did for John Peel, prior to the Marquee. And then later in 1981 for the
live album, Retrospektiw (Parts I + II),
and recorded 18 years ago at the Trianon theater in Paris in honor of their 30th
anniversary for the three movements including their groundbreaking album which would
be the third and final movement, Mekanik
Destruktiw Kommandoh.
This is now my tenth time listening Magma’s live performance
at the Marquee. And the sound quality is either an A or B quality from the
archives, it’s a very interesting release to see what the band or Vander
himself will come up with next for the next Archive release in the near future.
So repeat after me, “Hortz fur dehn
Štëkëhn Wešt/Hortz da felt dos Fünker/Hortz Zëbëhnn dëh Geuštaah/Hortz Wlasïk
Kobaïa!”
