Chi desidera ritornare alle epiche gesta dei Magma di Retrospektïẁ - cronaca in tre volumi dei concerti del giugno 1980 all'Olympia a Parigi - oggi lo può fare, se crede, anche attraverso la nuovissima ristampa in vinile che Seventh Records e Southern Lord con sforzo congiunto hanno prodotto in 1500 esemplari: http://www.seventhrecords.com/magma-19/seventh-and-southern-lord-presentent-1271.html

The first 10 years of Magma were celebrated on three memorable evenings in June 1980 at the Olympia theatre in Paris. This retrospective, reuniting most of the musicians who had performed in the group, was issued as two albums, Retrospektïẁ 1 / 2 (double) and Retrospektïẁ 3 (single). Issued first, Retrospektïẁ 3 comprises 3 titles: Retrovision, a long piece in the style of the album Attahk, in which the vocalists Stella Vander, Guy Khalifa and Maria Popkiewicz turn in a blazing performance over a driving rhythm section; a supercharged version of Hhai, in which the trio Lockwood / Paganotti / Widemann works miracles; and finally La Dawotsin, where, in a more muted register, the voice of Christian Vander triumphs through its mastery and profound sensibility.
Recorded, like Retrospektïẁ 3, during the soirees at Olympia in June 1980, Retrospektïẁ 1 & 2 is an absolutely fundamental album in which Theusz Hamtaahk, the first movement of the trilogy of the same name, is presented for the first time. The second and third movements, Wurdah Itah and Mekanik Destruktiw Komandoh, were of course already well known. Although played in concert since 1974, Christian Vander had waited for years before recording it for posterity as he wanted every note to be as beautiful, magical, essential and definitive as possible. It is with the same respect for his music that he releases here the most successful version of Mekanik Destruktiw Komandoh, considered outstanding on account of two incredible improvisations from Bernard Paganotti and Didier Lockwood. Klaus Blasquiz, who did not perform on Retrospektïẁ 3, is the lead vocalist on this version – and justifiably so, since he was indeed the Magma singer who first sang these two masterworks.

http://www.seventhrecords.com

Cinquecento esemplari in vinile per documentare la terza volta insieme di Charles Hayward e Thurston Moore, un pomeriggio dello scorso febbraio, poche settimane prima del memorabile concerto londinese di This Is Not This Heat: Improvisations (Care In The Community Recordings, 2017).

Earlier in 2017 iconic artists Charles Hayward and Thurston Moore spent an afternoon improvising. Charles Hayward on drums and Thurston Moore on guitar. This LP is the result. Improvisations is a vinyl-only release, limited to 500 copies worldwide. The seven tracks are unnamed but are identified by the side and order in which they appear, ie. A1-3 and B1-4. This was the third time Hayward and Moore played together. The session was recorded at Lynchmob studios through the famous 1969 Neve console originally built for the BBC.

https://www.facebook.com/careinthecommunityrecordings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95gmqUfrO_Q

Si avvale del Max Brand Ensemble e della splendida voce di Himiko Paganotti il nuovo lavoro di Michael Mantler, con più di un aggancio estetico con The School of Understanding ed entrambi gli occhi aperti sulla situazione politica e sociale attuale: Comment c'est, fresco di stampa per Ecm (e già bollente nel lettore cd).

Spiega l'autore: "Comment c'est (How it is) is a song cycle for female voice and chamber orchestra. Wanting to use French, a language that so beautifully lends itself to be sung, I had long been thinking of using a certain type of voice from French popular music in a totally different and serious context. When the project finally came to be realized I luckily found a very interesting French electro-pop/jazz singer, Himiko Paganotti. She turned out to be the perfect choice, having a tremendous range, both musically and emotionally. Introduced to me by John Greaves, an old cohort of mine, she had worked with him and in many different contexts, including the French cult rock-jazz band Magma. Our first occasion to work together was at a concert in Paris during 2014 with the Chaos Orchestra of composers Daniel Yvinec and Arnaud Petit. This collaboration resulted in a lengthy work entitled Oiseaux de Guerre (Birds of War), which dealt with atrocities of the Iraq war. Continuing from there, wanting to explore the voice and the general theme further, I worked on creating Comment c'est. I have always kept my musical life as abstract as possible, never directly related to programmatic influences or themes, such as world politics, news items or personal life events. In hindsight, that was only partially successful. After all, I participated in the early Liberation Music Orchestra projects with Charlie Haden. For me, however, it was more the musical experience that counted, rather than the expression of political views. Of course, at the time, one marched on Washington, demonstrated against Vietnam and, in general, behaved anti-government, anti-business and anti-establishment. Certain critical political-sociological world-views eventually began to appear from time to time in my work, such as in Cerco Un Paese Innocente (another song cycle, this one in Italian), and especially in the extended sort-of-an-opera The School of Understanding, with some of its songs resurfacing, extensively revised, in this current project. No longer able to ignore outrageous recent world events, it had simply become impossible to continue creating music without reacting to this overwhelming and pervasive environment of hatred, greed and corruption. Comment c'est therefore concerns itself quite specifically with a range of serious subjects, such as war, terrorism, hostages, migration, poverty, fear and the generally sorry state of our contemporary world. I have always wanted to simply create music that is beautiful and that perhaps reveals something that might be deep within us all. Yet, with this music, in particular, I hope not only to touch those elusive feelings but also to more concretely tell How It Is."

http://www.mantlermusic.com/Comment_background.pdf
https://www.discogs.com/Comment-Cest