CHRISTIAN VANDER: TRISTAN ET ISEULT [AKA: ẀURDAH ÏTAH] (OST)

Wurdah Itah ? 1974 (4/5) 12 ? Best Song: No point in wondering Now this is more like it, you pretentious freaks! Wurdah Itah takes the soft, stripped down throb of, er, that one I reviewed last time and combines it with the staunch howling angel-hell of the choirs and opera singers. This, to me at least, adds the full attack of Magma excitement into the maelstrom of mind-screw and offers us one of the band's absolute best. Another fine addition to the persona of the album is the stumbling aura of paranoid schizophrenia and mental disorder. The first handful of songs drop in and out rampantly and unexpectedly, giving the record that interconnected, smoothed and gapless rock-symphony feeling. It sways and shoots in and out between shuffling piano marches and raging hectic climaxes, like the best Magma to sample and taste.

I can also see the group slowly evolving and taking elements of popular music into their paradigm. Couldn't you imagine 'Fur Di Hel Kobaia' on the billboard charts right up there? I sure can, but I also took a few hits of acid this morning and can't exactly trust my judgments in these situations. You'll notice the stripped-down nature of the record in that it isn't anything more than piano, martial chanting, simplistic, but, omnidimensional percussion, and bass guitars. 'Wainsaht!!!' is a series of short, sharp, brainwashing shocks that are punctuated by a robotic-alien-encoded vocal spewing what I can only imagine is anti-earthling hate-speech to his various cohorts who congregate together in a structured dance of awkward harmonizing.

Even if the songs are separated every few minutes, you'd be best off taking it as one full experience. There aren't any real highlights or low points for me. It's all consistently entertaining and energetic, but it's also desperately uninventive for the band's standards, and the songs tend to blend together, lacking singular identities, but as I always felt, the best Magma is an experience more than an actual album of songs.