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This album is very difficult to describe for one who is as new to Zeuhl as I am. Listening to it, one can tell that every note has been carefully thought out; that every progression of notes has been chosen with great care, and that the recording has been done with a great amount of precision to ensure that it comes across exactly as the band intended. This music has existed, for the most part, for over 30 years before it was finally committed to disc and released to the public, so the band has had a lot of time to perfect it, to play it live and learn the music inside and out, and you can tell that while listening to it. (If you watch the DVD included, watching Christian Vander in the studio will verify the above statements). This leads to an album that is very well thought out, and technically superb.

The driving aspects of the music seem to be the vocals of Christian himself, as well as those of Stella Vander and a group of voices that presumably sing backup. But the singing is hardly standard - as anyone who has heard anything by this band knows, Magma sings in their own made up language and has a very operatic approach to their vocals. This combined with the excellent drumming of Christian Vander and the jazzy undertones creates the backbone of the genre Magma created, so this album won't surprise any longtime Zeuhl fans.

46 of the 51 minutes in this album are dedicated to the title track. It is a journey that slowly twists and weaves through a labyrinth of musical ideas, oft repeating a theme many times and developing it slowly over various repetitions. The problem is that some of the musical ideas, to me, lack punch or drama. These parts really break the flow of enjoyment when they occur, because I end up waiting for the next thing interesting (to me) to happen while I'm beat over the head with the same idea. None of them are terrible, but they remove enough energy from the album to drag it down a couple of notches.

That is, to a degree, nitpicking as this album is full of good ideas and intriguing musical ideas, of which the third part of the title track is my favorite by a small margin. The music is highly dramatic and, as mentioned above, tightly disciplined. Enough so that, although this is far from a perfect experience, it has intrigued me to continue investigating this obscure off- shoot of progressive rock (both the band and the genre).