All hooked up to every modern appliance

After the break-up of Be Bop Deluxe last year Bill Nelson was considering a solo career. Which, you may say, would seem to be a fairly logical step. What he's come up with, however, is his new Red Noise project/band — a 'working title' for his current activities. 'But it isn't really a band in the sense that Be Bop was,' he explains, 'where there were four individuals who were all signed to a record company directly and all responsible.' Because, although Bill eventually decided that the solo career idea would have been too restrictive, with Red Noise he's created space for himself that enables him to move in various areas. 'It could be ten people on the next album, could be three, or two, or even just me,' he smiles. 'That flexibility is what produces change.'

Certainly the initial Red Noise album, Sound On Sound, is a change from Be Bop Deluxe — although the signs of the change were noticeable for those with ears on their Drastic Plastic LP, probably the most 'different' record that the band produced. But Bill's approach to writing is changing too. 'I had no band to write for when I wrote the material for Sound On Sound, I was writing purely for myself. So I wasn't having to think: Oh, I've got a funky bass player who I've got to write some little funk lines in for. I was writing purely... a structure rather than even a piece of music, if you like. I didn't have to think about virtuosity at all, only effect. The effect was what I was after, a totality of sound and song that didn't actually say a lot about individuals playing it but lived on its own, aside from whoever was involved in the project.' This kind of approach is also enhanced by the fact that Bill writes on tape — in fact he's currently in the process of upgrading his 4-track equipment to a 'simple, foolproof, 24-track set-up'.

This involves knocking four rooms into one studio in his new Selby, Yorkshire house to be ready, it is hoped, for use in June. 'That way we can do the next Red Noise album there — once that album's done it should pay for the studio. Then I can use it for other things — I mean I'm not particularly installing it for the use of the band solely. What I'm hoping to do eventually is to set up a small label and get people I know and people I hear — there's quite a few people get in touch — and try to lease through EMI as I have that contact. As long as the studio covers its costs, because there's quite a few people I know who would like to do things but who aren't particularly the right kind of bands for major record companies to be interested in.' This, of course, would be full circle for Bill, whose career started with a record titled Northern Dream, a self-financed private release on a label called Smile (co-owned then by Bill and two people from the Wakefield Record Bar).

So he's very enthusiastic about his new studio, and the freedom it will give to work in all kinds of musical areas. 'I'm hoping that the bit of experience I've gained working with John (Leckie) in studios is going to help me handle it. I'm trying to make things much more simple than they would be, say, at the Town House (where Sound On Sound was recorded) - obviously I couldn't afford anything near that! Mind you, I find there's a lot that you tend to use in the studio that you can fake in other ways — like when we did Northern Dream we faked phasing by lowering a speaker into a bucket! There's lots of things you can do for next to nothing. It's like the old thing of using matchboxes and soapboxes for percussion... so I don't think I'll need banks of Harmonizers and things like that, I think I'll get around that — a couple of ring modulators maybe.'

Red Noise were in fact the first band to use the Town House studio for a whole album and Bill enjoyed the experience. 'It's a good studio,' he remembers, 'obviously they had teething troubles, but it was good.' In Mel Lambert's article on the Town House (Feb '79 issue) he mentioned that the Red Noise drum sound there was 'nothing short of astounding' — drumming on the record was shared between Bill ('to keep some of that oddness') and Dave Mattacks. 'I used a very old drum kit,' Bill says of these sessions, 'that I bought off Simon Fox a long time back. It's made up of all different bits and pieces, stuff he's had lying around in a cupboard at home since he was about 12 I think! I decided to use that simply because I was used to it; it's a small kit, only got one overhead tom and one floor tom, couple of cymbals. The best room at Town House I think was designed for using with strings, it's got a wooden floor with mirror walls — three sides of glass. That is the best place for drums, we kept them as natural as possible, didn't damp anything down, really kept it ringy and live sounding, nice and bright. And then we did little treatment things like Kepexing the snare drum at certain times, using fuzz boxes on different parts of the kit — it's a constant source of discovery, coming up with things all the time: Let's see, what aren't we supposed to do?'

The 'electronic' nature of the drum sound was helped along by Dave Mattacks' use of a drum synth, too. But no guitar synth from Bill? I found this strange because the Hagstrom Patch had been an integral part of the machine-like quality which began with Drastic Plastic. 'The logical next step was to take some of that,' Bill says of Plastic, 'because I wanted to get back to a rhythmically straighter basis as well; even though some tracks on Sound On Sound are quite devious rhythmically, they're simple in sections but the sections are put together in an odd way. So it gives an illusion of something complex happening, but in fact the parts are incredibly simple.'

But Bill found the Patch helpful in the demo stages of Sound On Sound. 'One thing I did, I was bouncing harmonics off a basic G-chord position and, because of the nature of the harmonic where you're not actually pressing your finger to the fret, if you hit them with varying intensities with your right hand you get a bouncing (from the Patch's sensing 'scanner') between the finger and the fret, so you get random note selection. And in fact Out Of Touch on the album is based on that — Andy (Clark) has bought a sequencer to handle that on stage — but that was originally done on the demos with the guitar synth. A lot of the things that are heavily synthesiser based were actually written because I was working with the guitar synthesiser at home for the demos. It's been very valuable in that respect because without it there I wouldn't have come up with those things.'

So with Red Noise and his new studio, along with ideas for his own label and experiments in other forms of music, Bill's very busy. 'I'm a great believer in that music shouldn't be an elitist sort of thing, it shouldn't be a thing that a sacred few know and understand. I think it should permeate the listening world in general, and that it should be understood, not just appreciated as something "strange" and "avant-garde" — it should be understood as what it is, as music or as sound, it should definitely contact more areas.' Tony Bacon

Magic Magma

I take the reissue in France of A&M Records' Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandöh and Kohntarkösz as the excuse for the following exegesis on Magma.

Magma was founded in France 11 years ago at a time when UK and US records completely dominated the French youth market and French groups all had to play the pop and blues based music that the foreign companies were selling. More extraordinary still, and hard for us to really comprehend, they had to sing in English.

It was in this climate that Magma began to develop their own music in France, a music which was essentially not American and not aimed at the commercial market.

For many years they were received with incomprehension or derision, often with actual violence. Soon they discovered that to be able to play with any frequency at all they would have to actively involve themselves in building an alternative network in their own country. Amateurs of music there were a-plenty all over France, but they needed a centre, a rock on which to build. Magma more than anyone else took on this role, much furthered by the organising genius of Giorgio Gomelsky, at that time their manager. In about four years, certainly by 1974, an independent European music had a foothold in France. French musicians learned to respect themselves.

As I have said, what was so important about Magma's music was that it did not concern itself with the fashionable foreign imports. It came mainly from a European compositional tradition — from Carl Orff, from Stravinsky, from eastern European folk music — and though their performing power came from rock and radical black jazz, the spirit, form and content of their 'oeuvre' was unequivocally European.

Magma did not sing in English. Their main composer, Christian Vander, created a phonetic language (more like German than anything else) which was conceived as an integral part of his music. This was not so much a nationalistic innovation as an aesthetic one. Kobaïan, as the language was named, solved two problems for Vander: 1 How to avoid singing in English, and 2 (more importantly) How to use any text at all that could match the power and suggestive vastness of the music — which was literally too dramatic for words.

It was in developing the dramatic in his music that Vander recognised a special quality inherent in rock: that electric instruments have at their disposal a range of dynamics and frequencies which no orchestra can command. So when Vander took certain elements present in European 'Art music' (particularly from Carl Orff), and introduced them into the rock vocabulary, he not only qualitatively advanced those elements in 'Art music' (especially the dramatic ones) but also advanced the potential of rock music itself as a medium for serious cultural work.

Now opposed to the Orchestra, one of the most significant attributes of The Group is its ethos of collective work, its ability to work beyond the sphere exclusively of music. From this point of view the Orchestra is doomed from the start as a hierarchical career structure whose relations are not personal or even ideological but simply commercial; an Orchestra's co-operation in playing is not a function of its relations as people but a conditioned response to impersonal marks on manuscript paper and the 'creative direction' of a conductor.

A group like Magma, on the other hand, can be a close-knit collective with commonly held aims — both musical and supra-musical. It can communicate with its audience on an existential as well as on a musical level. This audience becomes a living part of a new creative process, unbound by the old cultural accretions of 'Art music'. This audience experiences itself as a part of its own future.

In those days to attend a Magma concert was to go through a baptism of Fire and it was precisely this ritualistic commitment — even fanaticism — which gave Magma the strength to do what they did and which made what they did decisive and compelling. It was impossible to ignore them because they transcended the rock commodity category and entered a world of ritual and community. And this was also a world of musical nationalism which rejected the culture of the UK and US. No wonder they were so influential: they opened the door to a 'local' culture where before an alien culture had ruled.

As we have noted, Magma did not present their public with a nice simple musical commodity but rather with a social totality which included a shared struggle wrapped in a mystico-political ideology; essentially with a kind of religious participation. In this respect they were a bit like Sun Ra and referred back to an older tradition, a ritual tradition in which the music was only a part of a greater social whole.

They adopted a Bon symbol as their emblem which they always wore. They invented an entire mythology based around the planet Kobaïa. They dressed all in black. Their music was austere and highly disciplined; ecstatic and apocalyptic. They often harangued their audiences before, during or after a gig. Their main text, partially translated by Vander, described the purification of a wicked and warring humanity through willing self-sacrifice. 'The Universe guides them into the celestial march — the one from which there is no return. And Immutable Fate now completes its work.'

This 'seriousness' alienated both the unprogressive and the politically 'left' among their audiences — or at least gave them a severe moral headache. Were Magma fascist? Was it true that Christian had learned Hitler's speeches and sometimes declaimed them in Kobaïan at concerts? Rumour and speculation were rife and these as well as the black clothes, the discipline and the 'spiritual radiance' cannot be divorced from their unquestionably progressive cultural position. But this is not the place to discuss such a complex question.

A Magma concert could be seen as a ritual of death — and it was all too easy to forget that the initiation it affected was rebirth: that Magma were actually dealing with wakening and catharsis and never with fatalism or despair.

THE MUSIC

Rhythm

Magma had the extraordinary and unique quality of not only using highly complex rhythms — they were the first rock group I ever heard using a 5:4 relation (where five equally spaced beats are played in the space of four) — but also enmeshing everything in clear, strong body rhythms which bear the listener along with exhilarating ease. Often they employ the device (used by Stravinsky) of playing precise additive rhythms (5/8, 9/8, 7/8, 5/8 etc) against a straight (eg 2/4) crotchet rhythm, so that a third, implied rhythm emerged alternately on and off the beat — a rhythm which carries the listener straight through all the 'bar lines'.

Dynamics

This is a form of musical expression which is more appropriate to rock music (technologically) than to any other musical form — and yet it is hardly ever used.

I think it is true to say that no rock group has employed — and mastered — the use of dynamic modulation as Magma have. There is a continual mobility and sometimes even the effect of 'waves' of sound which subtly overlap; different parts move from foreground to background and vice versa so that both timbre and implied rhythm perpetually shift. Again, especially with the suggested rhythms arising from these dynamic variations the less 'conscious' body is rolled across the bars.

Melody

Melodically speaking Vander moves from rhythm-as-melody, where melody is a function of repeated rhythms or rhythms varying additively, to a romantic lyricism. The Cradle Song from Kohntarkösz is a good example of the latter; simple, poignant and impossible to forget. This is in fact a quality omnipresent in Vander's compositions and is brought into sharp focus by the unique vocal styles of both Vander himself and Magma's main singer Klaus Biasquiz. Many of Vander's tunes are directly derived from, or have a strong affinity to, eastern European folk music melodies and, like them, are intended to be instinctively remembered and a pleasure to sing.

Harmony

I am not well qualified to deal with this in any detail. Magma always use ambiguity in harmony; still lines moving against moving lines which create harmonic modulations, not ones which resolve but rather which always imply further forward motion. Very common is the 'Devil's interval', the diminished 5th, the most ambiguous interval in tonal music (hence the interdict on its use in the Middle Ages — hence too its extreme mobility and implication of imminent instability and change). This interval has another quality too and one much exploited by Vander: it seems untouchable, external, to exist independent of the keys. It is much used by Messiaen for instance for the Immutable, the Eternal and Fate.

Often Vander creates the impression of continual ascent. A concrete example of this is to be found in Kohntarkösz. Here the voices ascend the scale of D major while the basses descend in three uneven stages from C#, C, to E. Each time the voices reach the top of their scale: C#, they tie over to join the first note in the beginning of the next bass cycle. But at this point the scale cannot resolve while the basses are in E, so the scale has to continue to climb to its next note, which is D again and the beginning of another scale. Although it returns to the D an octave below, it gives the strong impression of an unresolved and unresolvable, melody, perpetually climbing, set against a steady but tense bass.

So to these two records: Magma's first two records were for Philips, France, the third and fourth for A&M, the fifth and sixth for RCA, the latest for Eurodisc. Christian also made a record for Barclay which is effectively Magma also. These two releases are the A&M records and from Magma's 'classic' period.

Mekanïk (Third movement of Theusz Hamtaahk — The judgement of Humanity for all its cruelty, its dishonesty, its uselessness, its vulgarity and its lack of humility. As predicted by the prophet Nebehr Gudahtt moved and inspired by the Spirit of the Universe in its infinite wisdom.)

For the first time Christian built up one short piece (which first appeared in a seven-minute version on a Philips sampler in 1970) into a full scale, epic work. It is undoubtedly the biggest and most consistent work Vander ever achieved and I suppose his 'master work' to date (though I prefer in some ways Tristan and Iseult, the Barclay record). Everything on Mekanïk serves the music, there is nothing extraneous and no display of technique for its own sake.

Mekanïk has the confidence to proceed slowly and thoroughly (in common with certain Russian films) and doesn't concern itself with novelty. It keeps attention not through frequent changes but by a sheer, overwhelming vastness which includes the listener; by delicate control of tension and development and occasionally by the perfect and apposite use of detail and subtlety. Special mention should go to guitarist Claude Olmos in this respect.

The record was made at the Manor in Oxfordshire and The Aquarium in Paris in 1973. The whole story of its travails cannot be gone into here but one thing is worth explaining. The whole of the first 16-track tape was mixed down and put back on to a new 16-track master — the other tracks on the new tape were then all filled up, especially in building the choirs. As a result some of the rhythm track is lower in the mix than was probably intended, but of course it was impossible to raise because it had already been mixed down.

Kohntarkösz. (Entering the tomb of Emehnteht-Re.)

Effectively this has three tracks though one is split into two parts and occupies two-thirds of the record. This is the title track and demonstrates a level of rhythmic and harmonic subtlety in Magma's music which they have not since equalled. Melody appears as a strong element and yet is almost entirely absent in a conventional sense. There is only rhythmic and harmonic tension; only implication, yet this creates its own body, its own melody and its own ineluctable motion. The choirs are used to particular and essential effect here.

As we noted in the context of dynamics so tempo too is grossly underused by rock music. This piece is an illustration of what can be done. As one of the most important groups of the decade Magma deserve your attention. The rest you must sort out for yourselves. Chris Cutler