Compie mezzo secolo in questi giorni - uscì ufficialmente il 10 settembre 1974 - uno degli album più importanti dei Magma, Köhntarkösz, registrato a maggio di quell'anno a Valbonne (Francia) con le attrezzature del Manor Mobile governate da Simon Heyworth e la produzione di Giorgio Gomelsky. In formazione con Christian Vander c'erano Stella Vander, Klaus Blasquiz, Gerard Bikialo, Michel Graillier, Jannick Top e Brian Godding. Leggendario!
Not being a man who tended to sit on his laurels Christian Vander decided, with Köhntarkösz, recorded in 1974, to set off in a completely new musical direction, putting anyone who expected a simple encore to Mëkanïk Dëstruktïw Kömmandöh straight onto the back foot. Fortified by the success of the last album, the majority of musicians would be delighted to lay back into their own style and play safe. Not so for Vander, who was driven to surpass himself, to bring to birth a new masterwork. Considered against the other albums, Köhntarkösz (the composition) used a profoundly original approach to lift the rhythmic pulse and float it above the music, so that instead of marking time it continually sits above the metre. The savage virtuoso drumming of the earlier albums is here replaced by a more restrained approach, in which every stick hit seems to weigh twenty tons by contrast. The result is a mysterious incandescent atmosphere which holds the listener in breathless thrall right up to the explosive finale.