Music
Magma
Assembly Hall, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
five stars
FORTY-one years on from their previous visit to Edinburgh, Magma’s appearance in the sometime Scottish parliament was at once surreal and very real indeed. As Stella Vander, the band’s long-serving vocalist and wife of its visionary drummer-leader, Christian Vander noted, they probably won’t be able to wait that long for their next visit. Nor should they.
The music of many bands who thrived in the 1970s can sound of its time. Magma’s does too, except that its time is somewhere around the year 3578. It comes from another planet, Kobaia, with lyrics written in Kobaian, a slightly Germanic-sounding language invented by Christian Vander, and if we’re not privy to what the three vocalists – four when Vander himself adds his distinctive guttural tones – are singing about, it doesn’t really matter.
It’s more about the sound and the rhythm of their voices. As the musicians, playing guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, vibes and drums, create a procession of moods, punctuation marks and brilliantly interlinking or contrapuntal phrases, Stella Vander, Isabelle Feuillebois and Hervé Aknin, a sort of Robert Plant recast as Wagnerian tenor, act out an otherworldly drama.
Doubtless there are internal cues but over two long pieces the music changed shape, pace, direction and emphasis like the molten substance the band’s name suggests flowing and spilling at will. The shorthand references used to describe their music over the years are John Coltrane, Karl Orff and Frank Zappa, and Magma is both all of these and none. It’s an extraordinary amalgam of rage and sweetness, individual dexterity and collective creativity and even the shorter encore packed more detail, daring, excitement and musicality than can be found in many a complete discography.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here