Rehearsals have finally drawn to a close for the Scritti Politti tour, which starts in Brighton tomorrow. It has been knackering. I mean, I don’t move around a lot, I don’t couple my tasteful keyboard stabs with expansive gestures and high kicks, but you’d be surprised how repeated and persistent standing up behind a Korg M1 takes it out of you. I have been sustained during this period of time with prepacked fruit selection boxes from Marks and Spencers, after an incident the other day where we bought a take-away curry from the Thai cafe around the corner, only to find a cockroach (dead) in Ralph’s food. We took all the food back and got a refund, plus £2 hush money. But hey, if someone fancies Paypal-ing me that £2, I’ll reveal the name of the place right here. Prepacked fruit selection boxes from Marks and Spencer just seemed the safest option, after that.
The Oxford show isn’t cancelled, by the way, despite rumours to the contrary. The Norwich show, however, is cancelled, despite no rumours to the contrary. Apologies. But we do get to play at the Latitude festival in Southwold with the Pipettes on Friday 14th, so that’s a bonus, for me at least.
This has been an incoherent and rambling post, and to be honest I probably wouldn’t have bothered posting at all, had I not just discovered something truly fantastic on YouTube. Regular readers will be familiar, or indeed even bored shitless, with my obsession with French prog rock legends Magma. But if that kind of obsession is also coupled with child rearing, then this kind of thing can happen.
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At some point in the last 5 years I developed an inexplicable liking for 70s French prog rock legends Magma. My icon, there, that's Christian Vander, the drummer. A while back I started (and subsequently got bored of) an affectionate one-joke ribbing of them at and bought all their records, of which there are many. They are the kind of band whose songs last 35 minutes, and to avoid writing new ones they just release new live recordings of the old ones. The same scam that Beethoven has been pulling for quite a while now. Cunning, eh.
This week, Magma have released their first new material for about 20 years, an album called Köhntarkösz Anteria. (They sing in their own made-up language, Kobaian, and the songs are mainly about space.) I'm listening to it at the moment. It's explosively ridiculous and complicated, and the last 8 minutes feature a choir of voices singing “Alleluia” in increasingly lop-sided time signatures.
Part of the attraction of Magma was that they were scary. Absolutely terrifying. They would stalk on stage in jumpsuits, play this pompous Wagnerian / Orffian progressive rock for about 3 hours, then stalk off, without a smile passing their lips. But what's this? Tucked in the cover of the CD I'm holding is a small pull-out double-sided poster, which can be seen at the bottom, here. It features the band, all wearing headphones at various stages of the recording. But mouse over that picture. Look to your right. There's a dog. A dog called Bübüh (to give him his Kobaian name.) It's a dog, wearing headphones. Magma have tried to make a joke. It's not a very good joke, and as such my opinion of them has slumped dramatically.
Great record, though.
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