New Music From Magma, Seth Graham
Magma
Zëss: Le Jour Du Néant
(Seventh)
Lately, this writer’s two most frequently uttered phrases are, delivered with wildly varying degrees of sincerity depending on the situation, “Everything’s going to be okay,” and “We’re doomed.”
In line with the latter sentiment is the new album Zëss from the French progressive rock band Magma, which according to band founder and percussionist/vocalist Christian Vander is “the story of the end of everything...absolute oblivion, like a dreamless night”; its translated subtitle Le Jour Du Néant means “the day of nothingness,” and with its elegant, apocalyptic intensity, it delivers on its promise.
While Zëss is about the end of time, it also marks time, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Magma and its unique creative vision. Magma not only made its own genre, “Zuehl”, which inspired several French and Japanese bands (most notably the ferocious Japanese outfit Ruins) but also created its own language, Kobaïan, and sci-fi mythology which initially concerned people who escaped Earth to seek refuge on the planet Kobaïa.
Prog-rock fans might be Magma’s most receptive audience, but the group’s style leans heavily on dramatic choral movements (think “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana) more in the realm of opera and classical music.
Complicating matters further, Magma also is inspired by saxophonist John Coltrane and avant-garde jazz, with some solos being delirious, free-jazz flights and some vocal passages with jazzy scat-esque singing.
This may sound like it could be a ridiculous mess—and surely it has provoked more than a few “WTF” reactions—but it’s music that is so well orchestrated and executed that one can’t deny its purity of vision.
Although Zëss was first conceived in 1977 and first performed live in 1979, it took over 40 years for Magma to complete the project and record a studio version, accompanied by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. A minimal bass line and piano riff acts as the railroad track for much of the album, while spoken narrations and odd scatting set the scene.
The album unfolds over 38 minutes, with mounting intensity with vocals and strings in tight unison and brass counterpoint; finally, the crowded piece reaches its maximum capacity as a climax is reached, suddenly shifting to a peaceful cool-down coda, as if to say, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s all over.”
Seth Graham
Hint
(Mondoj)
Dayton, Ohio musician Seth Graham is also known as a co-founder of the record label Orange Milk, and this writer has a high amount of confidence that in the future, at least one doctoral candidate will submit a dissertation about a musical aesthetic (and consistent visual aesthetic, on cover art) currently promoted by D.I.Y. tape labels like Orange Milk, Hausu Mountain, and Haord Records.
This critic has previously described the aesthetic as the aural equivalent of the insane, glitchy Adult Swim television show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! While there’s great variation between the artists in this broad category, generally this material can be weird, playful, intense and sometimes obnoxious, changing constantly and seemingly for people with short attention spans; there’s a heavy use of electronics and samples, sometimes going into vaporwave (retro ‘80s new wave elevator music) territory.
Knowing that, hearing the new EP Hint from Graham is a bit of a surprise, since there’s a prominent use of space in it, where he doesn’t feel the need to cram a million ideas into every second, and it’s actually released on the Polish label Mondoj, rather than his own.
Graham’s music has been called “blue-collar musique concrète”, referring to the music form that emerged in mid-20th-century France using pre-recorded sounds and tape-recording technology, and perhaps the “blue-collar” aspect of it means that Graham intentionally doesn’t employ the compositional rigor, along the lines of modern classical music, that musique concrète forebears like Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, and Pierre Henry used.
About Hint, Graham has said, “I wanted the creation of tracks to be pure joy, by not overthinking and collaborating with friends,” and knowing this, his collage of varied sounds seems to capture the intuitive nature of improvised music, where split-second decisions are made, but using the methodical processes of a computer-based editing system.
One collaboration is “Pierre / Ruby”, with the Austin, Texas musician More Eaze (a.k.a. Marcus Maurice), and it’s an oddly nourishing track with swelling strings and pizzicato plucks, plus an auto-tuned, fluttering voice that resembles GLaDOS from the video game Portal.
The other collaboration is “Black / Yellow” with Koeosaeme (a.k.a. Japanese artist Ryu Yoshizawa), which is more along the lines of the expected Orange Milk madness, with a chaotic, in-your-face jumble of sounds, like scratchy violins, synthetic splatters, haunted voices, and sinister tones.
The EP ends with the calming and welcoming ambient track “Love”, and while Hint may not be as dense and manically overloaded as other kindred releases, it actually might be one of the best (i.e. not immediately off-putting) introductions to the aesthetic for newcomers.