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Igor Wakhévitch: “Rituel de guerre des esprits de la terre”

From the album Hathor - Lithurgie du souffle pour la résurrection des morts (1973)

At once unique and unclassifiable, the music of Igor Wakhévitch exemplifies the kind of work that tends to fall through the cracks created by our slovenly habits of genre categorization. Born in Provence, France, in 1948, Wakhévitch cut his teeth in the 1960s avant-garde music scene in Paris, studying with such major figures as Pierre Schaeffer and Olivier Messiaen. Over the course of the 1970s, Wakhévitch released six albums exploring an intensely evocative and absolutely distinctive world of sound, in which surrealistic, musique concrète-style sound collages and ethereal choirs mouthing wordless chants share sonic space with minatory synthesizer drones and throbbing, quasi-kosmische sequencer lines.

Wakhévitch’s 1973 album Hathor (subtitled “Liturgy of Breath for the Resurrection of the Dead”) is the nightmarish soundtrack for some imaginary black mass. The dark, ceremonial tenor of the music is nowhere more imposing than in this track, ”Rituel de guerre des esprits de la terre” (“War Ritual of the Earth Spirits”).

Although Wakhévitch’s pedagogical lineage places him squarely in the European post-classical tradition, his work shows an undeniable affinity with the contemporaneous progressive rock currents of the time, down to the album art.  Moments on Hathor such as the penultimate track, “Amenthi,” in particular, recall the psychedelic free-for-all of pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd. This particular influence was likely channeled through Wakhévitch’s friendship with the American minimalist composer Terry Riley, who was also keen to forge links between the classical/experimental and popular music scenes.

In 1974 Wakhévitch was asked by Salvador Dalí to compose the music for the painter’s “opera-poem” Être Dieu (Being God). The result was a singular work of late-surrealist fusion spanning three LPs. It was re-released on CD in 1992. Wakhévitch’s studio albums from the 1970s received a similar treatment in 1998, being repackaged as a six-CD boxed set (entitled Donc) by the French label Fractal Records.

December 06, 2011, 5:02pm

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Hellebore: “Film de ripratoria”

From the album Il y a des jours (1985)

How is it that we can imagine musics that we have never heard?  What begins to explain the phenomenon of ideal music, that premonition of a world of sound long before it is encountered?  Why this unmistakable feeling of déjà vu upon hearing certain music for the first time, as if we apprehend something inexplicably pre-existent, something that elicits both a prelapsarian delight in pure perception and an uncanny recognition of the product of some cosmic hypothesis: in a universe such as this, this music must exist.

The music of Hellebore approaches an ideal form that has long haunted my imagination, an ideal which I could not express in words, and even now eludes description.  For now it may suffice to call it a music of deadly playfulness.

Hellebore was a French quartet composed of Jean Cael (bass, synthesizer), Alain Casari (alto sax, clarinet, flute), Antoine Gindt (guitar, synthesizer), Daniel Koskowitz (drums, percussion), and Denis Tagu (piano, organ).  Il y a des jours (“There are those days”), recorded in 1983-84 and released in 1985, was their only album.  Produced in a run of just 1000 copies, the album is now something of a collector’s item among aficianados.  But through the magic of the internet and the devotion of an anonymous blogger (bless their hearts), it can be yours.

October 08, 2010, 8:50pm

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Magma: “Ork Alarm”

From the album Köhntarkösz (1974)

For those who just can’t get enough Francophone prog-rock, and as a follow-up to my recent post on Univers Zero, I offer a sampling of music by one of the bands that seems to be at the root of the western European prog-rock movement beginning in the 1970s.

Founded by classically trained “drum hero” Christian Vander in 1969, Magma has been hailed as ”the ultimate progressive rock group” by anonymous internet oracles.  What musical glory could possibly live up to such hype, you ask?  How about a concept band whose premise is the future colonization of the planet Kobaia by a group of enlightened émigrés who have fled an Earth doomed to war and destruction? (Perceptive readers will note that this is essentially the same scenario behind Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s 1959 “space opera” Aniara, recently featured on this blog.)

If that’s not enough, Magma’s lyrics are sung in a constructed language called Kobaian.  Their music has apparently spawned a sub-genre of global prog-rock known as “Zeuhl,” which is a Kobaian word meaning “celestial.”

Although bearing many of the familiar characteristics of the more familiar Anglophone brand of prog-rock (extended, quasi-symphonic song structures, sci-fi or D&D lyrical obsessions, and a certain bombastic theatricality), Magma’s music is distinctive, accomplished, and significantly less obnoxious than many of its English language equivalents.  Perhaps it helps that the lyrics are indecipherable.

Magma also seems to have a more diverse stylistic pedigree than many prog-rock bands, whose classical training is often all too conspicuous.  Front man Vander played as a jazz drummer before starting Magma, and has named John Coltrane as a primary, enduring influence.  (The album Köhntarkösz includes a track called “Coltrane Sündia”— Kobaian for “Coltrane Rest in Peace.”)

November 20, 2009, 4:11pm