Archaïa – "Archaïa" (Choravox – CC 77.976) 1977

Unlike Punk Rock,which was at it's zenith when this Zeuhl homage was released. Zeuhl took its time to have any copycat groops following in Magma's footsteps.Whereas, there were legions of little Sex Pistols cropping up within 48 hours of the pistols first gig propah!...it took a good 5 or 6 years to get any little Magma's.

Incidentally John 'Lie'don of PiL (see what I did?) was a big Magma fan,and attended any London appearance of Christian Vander's outfit with his equally enlightened mate, John Wardle....aka Jah Wobble.

Also a big fan was Pierrick Le Bras and his mate Michel Munier,of Archaïa. Although a pair of Magma nuts ,they admirably tried to play something inspired by Magma's music but via a different path: using only percussion,no drums(great idea),guitar and keyboards.

The result is a less oppressive form of Zeuhl...if this is Zeuhl at all(?),,,or maybe its because they couldn't play their instruments,leaving,in my opinion, more space in the music,and less chance of smothering the listener. A bit like the difference between The Sex Pistols and PiL in fact;who also couldn't play, so they say.Daring to be minimal.leaving room to breath and grow,the art of subtlety free from the oppression of Vander's attempts to be Wagner's most favourite Rock band.Thankfully also absent are Vander's Brünnhilde substitutes,who do tend to get on one's fucking Titz!

Today I think that this is better than Magma, but tomorrow I may think the opposite,it depends on how pissed off I am.....or,for those superior purveyors of the noble mother tongue of ye olde Albion.....in English, how Pissed I am. That means 'Drunk' to those from the colony where we exported all our religious nutters to...sorry about that,but it had to be done.We,the English. also exported our criminals to Australia.which is probably why they always beat us at sport.That suggests a strange correlation between crime and sporting prowess? Hummmm? ...either that or Stupidity? So, as an tenuous attempt to provide some evidence,i can only point to the fact that my Aussie relatives are mostly stupid,and my american family are mostly MAGAphiles.....or worse....if that's possible?

Just one final topical observation from leftfield to close....PUTIN IS A TOTAL FUCKING CUNT OR WHAT?!...and any of you conspiracy twats who wanna argue the toss about how this prick is a dove of peace...please come forward!

Tracklisting:

A1 Soleil Noir 4:31
A2 L'arche Des Mutations 9:29
A3 Sur Les Traces Du Vieux Roy 5:00
B1 La Roue 2:31
B2 Le Festin Du Lion Vert 4:42
B3 Massa Confusa 3:18
B4 Le Grand Secret 4:18
B5 Vol Du Phenix 3:50

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Weidorje – "Weidorje" (Cobra – COB 37014)1978

The envious ears of a bunch of over-paid Parisian session men vibrated to the sound of Magma and they thought that they could do the same...but,as musicians are prone to think, they were better at it and could do better.

They managed to release just three tracks in their lifetime,which made up their sole album,here beefed up with a couple of live outings
They were of course very Magma styled,even nicking their Kobaian name from a Magma track,blending in elements of systemic music, and some saxophone.An element long ago dropped in early Magma giving it a distinctive sound of its own(it says here!).Yep....more Zeuhl-lite for potential chart action.The ill-advised use of Brass steers proceedings firmly towards the Fusion-end of Zeuhl,but at least those Wagnerian Brunhilde vocalists don't make an appearance.

The session men involved soon realised that there was no money in having their own Zeuhl band,and soon melted away back into playing guitar solo's for Johnny Hallyday or arranging romantic string sections for Sacha Distel.

They did however leave us one of the most listenable French Prog records,that may even attract people into the room rather than drive them away from it....dunno if that's a good thing, but sometimes its useful.Even if it's just to avoid the noise of the unenlightened majority demanding that this racket be turned off.

Tracklisting:

1.Elohims Voyage 16:33
2.Vilna 12:20
3.Booldemug 7:10

Bonus Tracks:
4.Rondeau 8:49
5.Kolinda 12:28

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Eskaton – "4 Visions" (Eurock – EC 81002) 1981

Fun to see that this cassette was released on the Eurock label,which not only draws a clear demarcation line between continental europe and the anglo-saxon music empire,but reflects the section in the record store of my youth,which was called Euro Rock;where i first gained access to the unfathomable world of what those european types did for entertainment when they weren't churning out toe-curlingly bad cheesy disco hits ,tooth-grinding ABBA-fuelled Schlager anthems and truly horrible wrist slashing Euro Metal like "The Final Countdown". 

Yes there was indeed unmistakably modern,continental music, that,unless you saw the band pictures,didn't first invoke laughter on behalf of the willfully ignorant average Anglo-Saxon pop picker.

These Euro-rockers looked like clowns,but free from the shackles of having to gain a 'hit' in the UK or USA,they could spend a longer time actually making the music that they wanted to. This was especially evident in West Germany,who had that great burden of post-war German Sartorial ineptitude to grapple with,as well as a dumpster full of Holocaust guilt to assuage. The french didn't have that burden of Holocaust guilt to attend to;although not squeaky clean in that department,they did largely get away with it.Sartorially, marginally better dressed than the average modern Bosch gentleman,musically they came up with the very Wagnerian concept of Zeuhl.....I say 'They'....it was more or less invented by Magma,or to narrow it down some more, Christian Vander done it guv'r sir so he did......said the Hollywood Pearly King.

And it is Magma that immediately comes to mind when listening to Eskaton. The only difference i can detect are the vocals, which are in French rather than Kobaian.....which,for the few of us who don't know, is the made up alien language that literates the parole of Magma's operatic female singers.

Like Magma, Eskaton also have a pair of operatic hippyfied Brunhilde's at the fore,who adequately up the aural oppression stakes like a less Nazi-fied version of ABBA,but somehow seem more accessible than Christian Vander's Wagnerian rockers. I dunno weather Zeuhl-lite is appropriate here, but they are as Zeuhl-lite as that particular format goes.......i may have to post a Magma Album I suppose?

DOWNLOAD something to like the french for HERE!

XAAL – "XAAL" (Xaal Self-released – Xaal 01) 1990

More lo-fi cassette culture Zeuhl in classically fuzzy chrom-dioxide quality,enhanced by a lo-bitrate to make it an even better smothering experience.

XAAL sound very 1990's......there's damming evidence of Fretless bass use,probably with seven strings and a lovingly looked after varnished wooden body.I strongly suspect that all of XAAL's instruments are shiny and well looked after. It's a phenomenon that began in the 90's,shiny chrome mike stands, tidy amplifiers,as new guitars, and tasteless natural wood bass guitar bodies.

One thing I noticed during the recent co-vid hysteria was that the number two item to be seen in the background of Zoom calls,after full bookshelves, is an brand name electric guitar sitting on a stand in the corner .All shiny and new,in barely used condition,to show that the caller is literate, but, cool.

Every fucker has an electric guitar and vast digital multi-tracking facilities these days....even those despicable Politician bastards.All that shite started with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair thinking,mistakenly, that liking Pop music would magically transform them from the awful grinning fools that we know they are, into something cool for Generation X to take seriously.Fool not Cool! Why would anyone want to know that David Cameron's favourite band is Radiohead for fucks sake? Dick'ead would be more appropriate one should suggest,especially as he is officially the second worst British prime minister of alll time,just behind his Eton educated chum/rival Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.....who to my knowledge doesn't own any musical instruments,but cringingly expresses a liking for The Clash,led.of course, by fellow posh boy,but in this case a dead one,Joe Mellor.....Boris obviously was not listening when he heard their punk socialism by numbers recordings.

Just as refusing to have a Tattoo or any piercings,was an almost subversive stance a few years back,now is the time to throw all those home studio's and guitars onto a large bonfire in the Rock'n'Roll hall of shame. Silence is the new route to self-expression through self censorship...stop repeating this mantra of terminal boredom.  Turns out that the great unwashed took this DIY thang far too seriously. There's too much fucking music now,made by people who don't know any better.STOP IT!.....I crave the return of untouchable rock stars, exclusivity and cliques .The moment the moronic majority like the same things as you ,you know that the games up and its time to give it up.An If they're 'Punk' I definitely fucking ain't!...kinda thing.

XAAL are one of those groups who not only have sparkling equipment, but have that deadly disability of just playing the notes,and forgetting the rest.Like an exercise in theoretical music.

But i'm sure there'll be plenty out there who will delight in their shifting time signatures, and accurate playing.....i know I do.

But that don't mean it's Gud bud.

 

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Shub Niggurath – "Shub Niggurath" (Self-Released) 1984

If ever there was a recorded medium made for a Zeuhl group it was the Compact Disc.It's crisp soul-less click free reproduction qualities marry up cosily with the icy pseudo intellectual soul-free exactitude of this obscure branch of the progressive rock joshua tree.So naturally we will opt for Zeuhl, as recorded on the always humble never grumble, compact cassette.

The music,judging by the standard made up language type Zeuhl moniker ,Shub Niggurath, is,like the name,fairly typical french progressive rock of that word that I'm using too much that begins with 'Z' variety.It's Jazzy,proggy,metally,full of funny time signatures and starts to suffocate the casual listener half-way through the first track.There are better examples,but this one began to get on my proverbials by the end of side one;but one persevered and ultimately found it rewarding thanks to the silence that was regained by its ending.

On another day I could easily praise this as one of the best things I've ever heard.But today it felt like being slowly asphyxiated by a large square of roof insulation.

Also, of course, they sound somewhat like a Magma tribute band....don't we all? 

Tracklist:

1 Yog-Sothoth 11:36
2 Entresol 6:53
3 Introduction 3:19
4 Barback 14:49
5 In Memoriam 5:23

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Happy Family – "Happy Family" (Cuneiform Records – rune 73) 1995

In this crazy,or do I mean Ker-aaaazzzzzy(?), mixed up muddled up old world that we tragically find ourselves imprisoned in, with no means of escape other than Death itself?....... I would have said Death Himself, but I'm flirting with being cancelled if I tread on the squeaky floorboards of sexual politics. So i'll leave the pronoun simply,as 'IT', or "ça" ,as they apparently say in France.Which is strange because I thought "ça" meant "That",until i saw the title on a French copy of Stephen King's "It!" was translated as "ça"......y'know, I think i would have read that schlock nonsense tome if it was called Stephen King's "That!"...a far better title.

Aha! France got mentioned again i noticed! As i've loosely been meandering through the murky ox-bow lakes of French Prog,in it's many mimicking forms,and brings us swiftly to the one form of musique moderne that is firmly rooted in that unfathomable land of Basque beret's, stripey shirts ,onions on strings,apalling body odeur parfum and cassoulet (which is basically bangers and beans for those lucky enough never to have had this reputation busting  crime against basic culinary standards).....where were we again?....ah yes...Zeuhl!

Basically Zeuhl is French Prog disguised as Frank Zappa's smarter brothers more intricately scored works as played by a heavy metal band of Jazzers.....and it ALL sounds the same. Usually they have very impressively crisp Jean Jacques Burnel Bass sounds, heavily miked up,and, massive,Drum Kits;as normally played by the band leader,who will come down hard on anyone a nano-beat out of time. The time signatures are strictly anything but 4/4,and they sing in made up languages. Sounds fun huh?

And this time claiming to be Belgian will not help your inevitable fate.

So here's one of the very best ever Zeuhl records,and ironically, as we've just had a French band playing Canterbury Scene Prog,as well as several French Krautrockers, here we have some Zeuhl as played by a bunch of Japaneses.Just as Japan is the only other country dumb enough to play baseball outside of the USA,they seem to be the only country outside of France to play Zeuhl. Infuriatingly, as normal, our Japanese brothers.....ok,and sisters(!), have a enviable talent of taking western musical forms and cranking them up a notch,from 10 to 11, to repeat that rock satire cliché one more time.They're better at Punk,better at Metal, better at Psych, better at Free Jazz, better at Harsh Noise, and they're better at Zeuhl as well. I suppose Japs are like fat girls in bed....they have to try harder or be binned off and ignored,bless 'em?

Maybe I exaggerate? Not like me I know,but in this case I definitely........am? 

Naah! Jap music rules dude...as some awful fucking yank skate-punk kid would say....but allow me to over-emphasise at will ,will ya.......duuuuude? I think i'm gonna be sick......it's that fucking 'orrible Cassoulet I ate for lunch coming back up to say sorry.

Sadly this fine CD album,is/was not available on Vinyl,which was the fate for countless numbers of poor lickle artists in the mid-nineties.If you see a vinyl album by a half-decent group from between 1990 and 2005 at a reasonable price, buy it,cus they are worth an eyewatering amount of your stolen crypto-currency. I sold all my Shoegaze collection for so much I nearly had to move to the British Virgin Islands and pass myself off as a British Virgin. That Ride album with the ocean on the cover (Nowhere?) paid my mortgage for a month!? I also found out that My Bloody Valentine's "Isn't Anything" was ironically worth quite a lot of something after all.

And No, Sonic Youth are NOT Shoegaze!

Tracklist:

1 Rock & Young 6:39
2 Shige Et Osanna 4:51
3 Partei 7:05
4 Rolling The Law Court 4:53
5 Kaiten (Ningen Gyorai) 8:22
6 Naked King 19:03
7 Drums Whisper Spacy 1:33

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