{"id":13636,"date":"2017-12-28T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13636"},"modified":"2017-12-29T07:47:53","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T12:47:53","slug":"the-magma-mega-interview-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/28\/the-magma-mega-interview-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magma Mega-interview, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Do you think of live performance as an extension of that which you create in the studio, or is studio work an attempt to capture the essence of live performance?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, this could be both ways because usually Magma always plays on stage before recording. Almost all Magma albums were recorded a long time after we tried it onstage in many different ways with many different changes. But then after we record it, because in the studio…<\/p>\n

You know, Christian is very tiring for people, because he has an idea every five minutes. So, even though it\u2019s complete and we are going in the studio because it\u2019s complete and we are going to record it the way it is, it\u2019s not true! Because he\u2019s going to change something else at the end. And then after we have recorded it and we play it again on stage, we can change things that we did onstage for months, or maybe even years, depending on what we changed in the studio to do the recording, you see. So it\u2019s endless.<\/span><\/p>\n

How has the music of Carl Orff influenced you?<\/b><\/p>\n

In fact, when I started to compose M\u00ebkan\u00efk D\u00ebstrukt\u00efw K\u00f6mmand\u00f6h<\/i>, I had never listened before to Carl Orff. Magma’s pianist of that time, which was Faton Cahen, told me, \u201cThat sounds a lot like a composer called Carl Orff,\u201d and he had me to listen to Carl Orff for the first time. And when I listened to that, I said, \u201cOh, this is the ideal orchestra for Magma; this kind of orchestra would be really nice to have.\u201d But because I never listened to Carl Orff before that, his music did not have a real influence on those compositions.<\/p>\n

Magma does not sound like anyone else. There are occasional bits \u2014 maybe a few notes \u2013 that lead one to think, \u201cOh, that\u2019s a little bit like Frank Zappa,\u201d but then it\u2019s gone.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

And there are spots in which the music reminds me of King Crimson. I\u2019m curious what you think of King Crimson\u2019s work.<\/b><\/p>\n

In fact I have never really got into King Crimson music. You know, I barely listened to all those bands from the same era. I was really, really much more listening to jazz all the time and especially Coltrane. Sometimes, someone would come to me and say, \u201cYou should listen to this or that.\u201d But I always learned a lot more from jazz music than from any other kind of music, and especially more than \u2014 what\u2019s it called? \u2014 prog rock. And I think that Magma is not<\/i> a prog rock group at all!<\/p>\n

Do you feel a kinship with jazz artists who were working in the late ’60s and ’70s?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. I was listening to jazz musicians from that time. Like, for example, Tony Williams. His drumming was very inspiring. Also, for example, Weather Report. In fact, I was working on a composition at that time, and I listened to that album [1974’s Mysterious Traveller<\/i>] from Weather Report with the song \u201cNubian Sundance.\u201d It was very much like what I was working on that time, and so I stopped to work on that composition, because I thought that it was well done by people from Weather Report. Afterwards, Weather Report became a bit different, but in the beginning, we were feeling close to those people, of course.<\/p>\n

My wish is to always surprise the audience, but also surprise myself when I am composing. And there wasn\u2019t anymore surprise when I listened to this Weather Report album. So, that\u2019s why I changed completely and forgot about what I was working on at that time. And [today] the idea is still that I want to surprise myself even before surprising the audience.<\/p>\n

The very earliest Magma albums are sometimes described by critics as having a musical connection to jazz rock fusion. Are you comfortable with that characterization?<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t agree with the label jazz rock fusion, because we don\u2019t want to have any<\/i> labels put on Magma\u2019s music. When I meet people and they say, \u201cWell, what do you do?\u201d I say, \u201cI\u2019m in a band called Magma,\u201d and blah blah. \u201cAnd what kind of music?\u201d I use only one word: unclassifiable<\/i>. Yeah, that\u2019s why we made the word zeuhl<\/i> for that: to avoid any other label.<\/p>\n

Other artists have made music in the zeuhl style. Are you pleased that this happened, or do you see the movement as others merely copying on the foundation that you\u2019ve created?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, of course, we\u2019re pleased because it became a new genre, and you see it is even in specialized shops. You have jazz, you have pop, and then you have zeuhl. In this moment, you can find very good bands that can surprise as well, and some others who are just copying. And this is normal. I mean, you start by copying before finding your own way to do it, but it\u2019s a very good thing, of course, to be able to say, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m doing my own kind of music, and I\u2019m not the only one to do it.\u201d So I think it\u2019s a very good thing.<\/p>\n

Magma had a logo a long time before doing so was a common thing for bands to do. How important was and is the concept of \u201cbranding\u201d as far as Magma is concerned?<\/b><\/p>\n

We released a DVD earlier this year. We put the logo on the cover, but we didn\u2019t put the name Magma<\/i> on the cover. We think that now we can only [use] the logo and people know what it\u2019s about. And when they don\u2019t know, they ask, \u201cOh, what is this logo?\u201d And they look into it. And we think it\u2019s very important to stick to a kind of logo when you are happy with it. Even outside of music, brands like Coca Cola, for example, or Volkswagen, they never change the first logo they [created].<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Do you think of live performance as an extension of that which you create in the studio, or is studio work an attempt to capture the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,41,56],"tags":[3266,1377,3267],"class_list":["post-13636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avant-garde","category-interview","category-prog","tag-christian-vander","tag-magma","tag-stella-vander","cat-7-id","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13636"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13830,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13636\/revisions\/13830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}