Zeuhl 5

It was five years ago that, in the face of local apathy, Christian Vander set about forming Magma. Vander, initially a jazz drummer, and one with a pedigree as long as your arm, had become scornful of the abilities of his jazz improvising contemporaries.

He could find no one that shared his passion for the musical and spiritual path adopted by the late John Coltrane, and, somewhat disillusioned, he ultimately abandoned the jazz scene and took whatever commercial gigs were available.

Thus it was that at one point in 1969, Christian found himself laying down a half-hearted off-beat behind Arthur Conley on a tour of Italy.

On returning to France, he found that a number of French rock groups had sprung into existence, possibly motivated by the lack of visiting talent. Amongst these bands were Triangle and Martin Circus, unknown over here, but for a while fantastically successful in France.

"The audience were on their knees before these bands," recalls Vander, "and everyone was telling me that they were tremendous. I knew differently. There was nothing there at all."

So Vander decided that he'd alter the listening habits of France by forming his own band.

His dream was to realize this by playing music that was spiritually as well as physically satisfying.

The problem was finding the right musicians. There were initially no virtuoso jazz players that were prepared to attempt Christian's experiment, so Vander looked instead for people who were not necessarily great players, but who had character and imagination and energy.

Surprisingly, the first musicians that wanted to play with him were the horn players from Johnny Halliday's band, who were honking and riffing themselves to sleep every night, playing music in which they had neither faith nor interest.

Thus it was that the first inception of Magma was by Vander's own admission, "Musically atrocious."

A twelve-piece band, it incorporated the Halliday fornt-line, a free jazz double bass player, Laurent Thibault on electric bass, who was later to produce the first album ("a lovely guy, but he couldn't play in time"), Eddy Rabbin on keyboards, the excellent Claude Engel on guitar, and Rene Garber on vocals.

Rene, who rejoined the band last year as a contrabass clarinettist, suffered from an inability to sing in tune, and has since returned to music college to study pipe organ.

But from shaky beginnings, Magma gradually took off, having picked up Klaus Blasquiz at a demo studio, when Garber had failed to turn up for the recording.

Vander had decided that the band shouldn't sing in French as the language is weak sounding one, and as he couldn't speak any other language, he invented his own, full of gutteral noises, and strange Teutonic syllables, perhaps instinctively reflecting Vander's own background, for his roots are not in France, but rather in Poland and the Baltic forests - his grandfather was a nomadic gypsy violinist.

But to make the new language functional, Vander sketched out a kind of outer-space morality play, a continuing rock cantata entitled "Theusz Hamtaahk," being a multiple-part story of relationships between Earth and an imaginary Earth-colonised planet named Kobaia.

Using this unlikely plot, Vander has created a sci-fic microcosm that bulges with all manner of contradictions and controversies, using the theme to propose all manner of arguable points.

Among these, that tyrants are, or can be, guides for civilazation, and that wisdom and enlightenment can only be achieved via punishment.

Strong stuff, and the recorded tales of Kobaia so far center around damnation than salvation, with multiple cyclic disasters much in evidence.

To date they've been three Magma albums: "Magma"(French Phillips 63595.001/2 - a double album), "1001 Degrees Centigrades"(French Phillips 6397.031), and "Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh" (A&M SP-4397).

Of these, only A&M record is widely available in this country, although the first two may be obtained from better import shops.

It has to be emphasized. however, that it's not just in lyric content that Magma are a force apart from the rest of rock.

Musically, they're more far-reaching than any other band I can think of, and they absorb influences from literally every music form, taking in elements of Bartok, Stockhausen, Carl Orff, Wagner, Coltrane, Ellington, fragments of European folk musics, oriental drones, yet all the time retaining rock'n'roll vitality, with explosive use of dynamics.

They breeze effortlessly through crippling time changes, yet without sounding overtly "intellectual" or "tricky." Indeed, at recent English Magma gigs, idiot dancers have been observed happily getting it on in 7/4 and 9/4, something unthinkable at, say, a Soft Machine concert.

And speaking of the Softs, it's interesting to recall that their "Third" was hailed as a masterpiece of invigorating invention, and we were told that the band's "crucial importance in the future of popular music cannot be denied."

That's as maybe, but it's fascinating to observe that Magma's first album is exactly contemporary with "Third", and in compositional and instrumental terms, it far outstrips the Softs' record, although the two bands at this period shared a certain unity in their use of horns.

The principal reed player on all of Magma's recordings has been Teddy Lasry, who's no longer with the group, but is far too important to leave out of any history. Lasry's departure has not been one of choice, but the saxist/flautist is only partially-sighted and cannot take the strain of life on the road. Nontheless, lasry helped shape the direction of the band, and contributed saveral compositions, notably "Sohia" and "Iss Lansei Doia", to Magma's repertoire. Lasry still performs with the band occasionally in France, where the group play six-hour long sets, a somewhat daunting prospect, since the two-hour concerts they've given in England have proved to be the ultimate sensory overload.

Even now, Magma continues its unstoppable path through Britain leaving behind a string of standing ovations, and a legion of new believers.

Magma's self-styled "Zeuhl Music" is like nothing else ever heard by English audiences, and yet it's met with an open, positive response almost everywhere the band has played.