Magma
1980-06-10
L'Olympia
Paris, France

Lineage: traded cd-r > eac > flac8

A NOTE ON OFFICIAL RELEASES: Dedicated fans of Magma will of course be familiar with the "Retrospektiw" series of albums, supposedly recorded at the Olympia in Paris on June 9-11, 1980. I have compared my recording to the official albums and can state with certainty that none of the material on this recording appears on the official albums (which, of course, you should buy, if for no other reason than for Bernard Paganotti's mind-blowing solo on "MDK"). Weirdly enough, it turns out this is because the "Retrospektiw" albums are actually _studio_ recordings with audience applause overdubbed; they're about as "live" as Steely Dan's "Aja". Who knew they were still doing that kind of thing in 1980? (Benoit Widemann, a keyboard player for Magma, confirmed this in an interview with Jerome Schmidt's site; see http://members.aol.com/sleeplessz/reviews.htm .)

With that out of the way, on to the show itself. This is the middle of three special concerts given by Magma to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band. Guests from throughout the history of Magma appeared, and many songs not played for a while were performed. It was sort of like the "Mythes and Legendes" gigs Magma did two years ago, except twenty-five years earlier and not _quite_ as totally awesome as those concerts (though still pretty darn good). In length this is the middle of the three; apparently they added more material with every concert they did. (Ork Alarm lists Spiritual, Le Rock, La Dawotsin, Funky Devil, and Who's My Love as being played at these concerts; presumably they were done only on the third night.) I am also told this is the best-quality of the recordings. I haven't heard the other two, so I can't compare, but the sound quality is pretty decent, if not stellar. There are small cuts in "Kohntarkosz" and "Theusz Hamtaahk", which is why they are each split up into two parts.

For my ears, the standout track here is "Zess", which for my money is the best version of this underrated Magma composition I have ever heard, definitely outpacing the Bobino version, and containing musical themes not present on that rendition.

I'm not including any lineup information because it would be too long. To sum up pretty much everybody who played with Magma during their first ten years is here. (The major exception is Janik Top. I don't know why he didn't make these gigs, as apparently he played some other gigs with Magma around this time.)

This is unfortunately the last of the complete Magma concerts I have to seed. I do have one more small thing that I will seed when this is done, and that's it for me. Thanks to everybody for their fantastic contributions to the recent Magma flood! It's great to see so many familiar faces about, as well as folks I don't know.

d1t1 Kobaia (10:26)
d1t2 Band Intros (2:46)
d1t3 Ki Iahl O Liahk (10:23)
d1t4 "Iss" Lansei Doia (10:59)
d1t5 Kohntarkosz part 1 (10:19)
d1t6 Kohntarkosz part 2 (21:36)

d2t1 Theusz Hamtaahk part 1 (23:53)
d2t2 Theusz Hamtaahk part 2 (9:12)
d2t3 Retrovision (18:18)
d2t4 Hhai (14:08)

d3t1 Zess (34:50)
d3t2 Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh (43:00)