MAGMA. Artrocker interview

by yul on Tue, 2009/10/06 - 1:50pm Post to Twitter

French band Magma play euphoria-inducing cosmic space operas about interplanetary war. Led by Christian Vander, the much revered virtuoso referred to by many as ‘the greatest drummer in the world’ and with vocals sung mainly in their own invented language, their music is so vast and unique it became its own genre, ‘Zeuhl’.

In anticipation of tonight’s Celestial Mass show at The Barbican where they share the stage with JP Massiera and Chrome Hoof, We spoke to singer Stella Vander about the MAGMA sound, their long awaited return to London and er, Steve Davis.

Artrocker: Can you say for you what is the essence of the Zeuhl sound?

Stella Vander: It is about vibrations.  Music that comes from vibrations…  And it’s amazing because now there are bands all around the world that play what they would say is the Zeuhl music and even there are bands that maybe have never heard of Magma but still might say they are a Zeuhl band.

AR: There are people online who are compiling Kobaian dictionaries (Kobaian is Magma’s own invented language), do you think this is actually possible given the mysterious nature of the language and how intrinsically linked it is with the music?

SV: It’s linked with the music of course, you know words are coming with the music and it became a kind of language because when you feel the same kind of mood coming the same words are coming and so you say well this word should mean this because the mood is telling that.  But there is no grammar, so you can make sentences but with no grammar and… I don’t know how many words there is but I don’t know if you can go to the baker and ask for some bread… maybe not!

AR:  Ok, probably the most famous English fan of yours is Steve Davis…

SV: Ah well Steve, yes, we actually became very good friends with Steve when he actually paid for us to play in England a long time ago because he was too busy with tournaments to come to France to see us.

AR:  I heard you played snooker against him last time you were here, are there any plans for a rematch?

SV: Yes well actually I don’t think he will be coming to the show because he has to do a snooker commentary but actually we have a place in the south of France and it has a billiards table and he is coming to visit in a couple of weeks.

AR: Ah, so you can play him on home territory!  Ok so what’s coming next for Magma?

SV: We have a new album coming out on November 5th which is… some of the parts are old material but it’s mainly new material, and we have a new team also, since a little more than one year we have a new pianist and we have a new singer and a new vibrophone player… how do you say, ‘vibrophonist’?

AR: And so what can we expect from this new material?

SV: Well there’s a mixture of influences and many different things but all completely Magma, and what you are going to hear in the last part of E-Re (the new album) is a long tune around forty five minutes and the third part is new material and this is the kind of music that Christian is getting into now, and it’s very difficult to explain, it’s getting not really ‘easy’ to listen to, it’s not getting ‘popular’.  It’s getting more, not classical music but I have an English friend who says that Magma is ‘more than classical’ music and I think this is a good way to explain.  It’s really unique.

AR: Is there anything you’d like to say to the people looking forward to the show?

SV: Well we’re very happy to be here again, it’s been too much time, I remember in the seventies we were coming very, very often to play in England, and we would like to come more often, and also we would like to find a way to get younger people into Magma here, because last time we were here we noticed that the audience was different than in all the other countries we were going, there were very few young people in the audience.  Even in Japan and in The States there were a lot more younger people than before and a lot more girls too and I don’t know why in England it’s not the same.

And I must say that in the beginning I was surprised with the way that the Barbican Hall was promoting this show, Celestial Mass, it was a bit too much ‘revival’ for me because we really want to go forward and we are always doing new music.  We’re not a band like a few bands that you see sometimes that are putting their band together again to go on the road because maybe they need money to pay taxes.  We never stop, it’s completely different, it’s not a revival band and that’s a thing that we really want to say to the audience.

You can find photo’s from Celestial Mass show at The Barbican here.