Magma - Felicite Thosz

48 years later, Magma always opens the door to come upon what their next journey that is next for the listener to embark on their spaceship from their home planet, Kobaia. Christian Vander who formed the band back in 1969, is the brain child and the mastermind of the band and you might never know what he will come up with next. Magma’s 11^th studio album released five years ago entitled, Felicite Thosz was recorded between September, 2011 and April, 2012 in Francis Linon’s studio on the French Riviera.

Vander wrote the piece sixteen years ago after completing one of his complicated and exhausting compositions, Les Cygnes et les Corbeaux. The 28-minute piece evolves the spirituality, fluid, and evolving melodies that bring to mind of world music, classical, and jazz. It begins with Ekmah that begins with an eruptive blast for a few seconds by Vander’s drums and the vocals at first and then it gets eerily quiet and back to the blast-like explosion.

You can imagine both the Kobaian language and piano melodies, walking into a misty fog and knowing you’ve entered a town with no people and the pin dropping at the exact moment as it gets intense in the last few seconds. As both Elss and Dzoi, goes into a heavenly sound as if the pearly gates have opened the soul genre for a brief minute before heading into the sounds of Central Asian music.

But it’s Stella Vander’s vocals that gives me chills every time I hear sing in the language, Christian knows that she is ready to give the right moment. It’s evidential on Teha as it sounds like a style of Motown Tamla ‘60s R&B vibration and the harmonizing vocals of The Temptations. It is a strange and bizarre piece, but it works completely well to show their melodic side. And you can hear parts of it in the opening sequence of the 2012 documentary, Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga about Rock in Opposition.

Duhl and Tsai! Feels as if the two of the pieces reminisces of Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh as they bring their own style of the Klezmer genre in a strange twist for a jumping piano dance across the hallway of excitement with Ohst. While the suite is off the wall and just completely took me by surprise and I always wonder what Vander will think of next, it’s the closing track Les Hommes Sont Venus, showing the genre of post-modern music.

Different beats and phrases along with the glockenspiel, sees Magma delving into the musical sections of both Minimal and Aleatoric genre and taking the essence of Philip Glass’ Music in 12 Parts and Terry Riley’s In C. Magma’s music again, is very hard to get into. Whether you get it or don’t, they have never, ever, ever disappointed me since hearing their music on the 5-CD box set Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era and the ProgArchives website 12 years ago.

As Vander said,  “Life is always on a Tightrope.”