K.A (KÖHNTARKÖSZ ANTERIA)

After a twenty year gap in which the musical weirdness of MAGMA fizzled out with the lackluster 'Merci,' it seemed that the Kobaians had packed up ship and headed back to their distant colonized world having found the state of affairs of our Earthly 1980s too much to handle. They had come to guide humanity into a higher state of consciousness but everything about the times was indicating an opposite effect. It goes without saying that the band is the brainchild of Christian Vander who not only developed the new musical genre that would come to be known as zeuhl (Kobaian for 'celestial'), but also the entire mythology and science fiction chronicles for the tales of planet Kobaia which they so inconveniently narrate in their own indecipherable language. Vander himself hadn't evacuated the planet, of course, and has explained the enervating circumstances which led to the band's initial demise however he continued working with various other projects including Fusion, the Christian Vander Trio, Welcome and Offering as well as releasing solo albums under his own moniker. It came as a surprise to everyone that a good thirty years after the peak of their creative output that MAGMA would release one of the best albums of their career.

K.A. which is an abbreviation for Köhntarkösz Anteria' is actually a prequel to the 1974 album 'Köhntarkösz' which together forms a trilogy finally realized with the 2009 closer 'Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré.' While the overall general mythology revolves around the spiritual quest of two men seeking secrets of the occult world in order control the forces of the universe and achieve immortality, K.A. provides the narrative of how these things came to be beginning with the main character (whose name is Köhntarkösz) finding out the roles he will play in the spiritual history of human evolution. This is, of course, intended for those interested in the underlying saga that is so craftily obscured beneath the impenetrable Kobaian language that are even taken to the point of being written out in the liner notes in Kobaian and are in effect complete gibberish lacking the addition of a dictionary at hand. Lyrical and mythological significance aside, MAGMA has never been the kind of band where the hidden sagas of far away worlds ultimately matter anyway. It's the music that draws us mere Earthlings in like moths to a porch light and K.A. delivers a bona fide greatest hits of musical styles honed and perfected throughout Vander's forty some years (at the time of release) on the world's progressive albeit underground experimental rock stage.

The album may consist of a mere three tracks with each outperforming the other, yet flow together as if the entire affair is a seamless intergalactic opera that expresses the narrative in ever changing tempos, bold and playful dynamics all artistically decorated with a wide-ranging palette of instrumental and vocal variations that will be instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with early 70s MAGMA fans but would surely sound like an extra-terrestrial liturgical drama to anyone yet unfamiliar with these unorthodox musical developments. Like the early MAGMA albums, a lot of musical mingling of influences outside the rock paradigm means that the Carl Orff meets Sun Ra effect easily connects K.A. to the trilogy in which it belongs. The album was for the most part composed in the same period of 1973-74 with fragments appearing on their 1977 live album 'In'dits.' While stylistically similar, K.A. offers a much needed reboot for the MAGMA brand name with only Christian and Stella Vander finding their way into the new 21st century version of the Kobaian universe. No, you will not find Jannick Top, R'ne Garber or other past masters on board here. This is a whole new cast of Kobaians with a guitarist, bassist, two keyboardists and five vocalists including Vander's signature improvisational falsetto scatting techniques that add one more layer of mondo bizzaro to the heady MAGMA experience.

The good news is that all members on board are up to the task of reaching and exceeding the high bar set long ago. The lineup is actually quite similar to the 2001 live 'Theusz Hamtaakh La Trilogie au Trianon' which includes Emmanuel Borghi on piano and keys, Phillippe Bussonnet on bass, James Mac Graw on guitar and Antoine Paganotti and Isabelle Feuillebois on vocals. New to the MAGMA family are keyboardist Frédéric d'Oelsnitz and vocalist Himiko Paganotti. All members past and present exquisitely meld their respective talents into one gorgeously long piece that while segmented remain in sync with the story at hand and effortlessly cascade and segue from one unintelligible musical tale to the next. While the material may have found its creation in the early 70s world of the nascent progressive rock era of extreme experimentalism, Vander was restricted at the time due not only to the limitations in technology but also the tight budgets they were subjected to (it sucks being ahead of the pack) and thus never had the resources to grace the albums with the affluence of a decent production budget. On K.A. all the modern day techniques are utilized to make a crystal clear and powerful album that sounds like the perfect hybrid of the classic 70s musical style with 21st century advantages. While the performances are hardly incumbent on the technological advances, it certainly makes great music sound even better.

No one could have seen this gift beamed down from the Kobaian heavens above. Progressive rock bands from the 70s rarely live up to, much less outperform the performances of their heyday but for anyone who has seen Christian Vander play his drum like a pro well into his senior citizen years will understand that the man simply never loses his magical musical mojo on either his manic percussion prowess or his ability to utter those ear-piercing shrill falsetto scatting sessions that add that extra amount of weirdness to the already out-of-the-box outlandishness. And likewise nor does he seem to botch up the Kobaian mythological legacy in any way which could be helped by the fact that the alien lyrics give an air of total mystery surrounding the nebulous concepts. All in all, K.A. ranks at the very top of MAGMA albums in its sheer audacity not only in incorporating all the tastiest ingredients of their glory years but by also ratcheting up the musical concepts to new levels without sacrificing one little iota of their idiosyncratic zeuhl rhythms, seductive yet bewildering musical transitions or the vim and over-the-top vigor that graces every bombastic or sensual cadence. Not to mention revealing a hitherto unfinished piece of the ever-unfolding Kobaia mythology. This is one of the most brilliant comebacks in the prog universe and also displays the timeless erratic beauty of Vander's vision that emerged in the wild and crazy 60s. Another timeless masterpiece has emerged and well worth the thirty years that it took for its completion.