ËMËHNTËHTT-RÉ

I'm a casual Magma fan, I own most of their studio albums in mp3, legally downloaded from itunes. Recently I found Udu Wudu and Attahk lingering in a second hand record store in Wellington and I bought MDK in a dark, underground, spooky store in Tokyo 2 years ago. I'm not aware of all the details around the evolution of Emehntehtt Re, how it featured in Mythes and Legendes and how it was a constant feature of Magma's recent concerts. Zurra Tendiwa's excellent review points to the fact that there are pieces in this album that are already part of the Magma's canon: Announcement from Hhai, Rindo from Attahk and Zombies from Udu Wudu. As soon as I received the CD I sent it to my mp3 player (a Creative Zen, never liked the sound of the ubiquitous ipod) and off I went: first observation, what a great production, you can distinguish every instrument clearly, and this is the basis for a rewarding long term relationship with this album, as every new listen unravels details that escaped our senses before. The first two parts are absolutely marvellous, Christian and Stella's vocals are very well restrained, gone are the spooky screams that adorned such albums as MDK, everything here sounds regal, sober and majestic. The familiar parts are so well played that they sound like different compositions; the energy of Zombies is so uplifting that I couldn't restrain myself of moving several body parts to keep the rhythm. The final 3 pieces are also excellent, in fact, Part III feels too short, I could have easily managed 10 more minutes of this "celestial" bliss. But what makes a great album is a solid ending and the last 2 songs are truly haunting with the spoken vocals in Sehe mirroring the introduction to Part I. The key message is that this is a work of enormous complexity, yet it sounds fresh and it's easily digested. Even though some parts are made of just "sounds", these sound as "music", music made in Heaven, or Kobaia, or the Land of the Death. An excellent starting point to Magma's demanding catalogue. Album of the year in one of the most prolific years in history? Is it album of the decade? Could somebody organise a poll?