TEENBEAT !

Magma’s debut could be considered the birth of a subgenre, called Zeuhl, but in fact their debut is simply a good fusion album. Their music is clearly rooted in jazz, with some avant-garde and psychedelic leanings, which was not rare at those times. There are some classical influence too. Their music is diverse and they were courageous enough to release a double album in their debut, filled with long songs and apparently no song fit to be released as a single, but this becomes obvious soon, because Magma was not a band interested in doing accessible music. One of the problems of Magma music is that it is too much repetitive, but luckily this album has few repetitive moments. Highlights of the album are the opener, which is a superb jazzy song, with a good jazzy main riff, mainly piano and bass. There is a beautiful classically-inspired piano passage in it also. Aina, that has many different changes in the song and very good inspired parts, showing different moods in the song (calmness, tension, etc.). Aurae has some good acoustic moments with a very beautiful flute melody and acoustic guitar riff. The same happens in the song Nau Ektila, but this second has more avant-gardish parts that are not so inspired and then jazzy parts that are excellent in the end of the song, featuring insane bass and drums. Last song has many crazy parts. Some are interesting and some others are not so good, but overall the song is very nice too. Magma’s debut ends to be a very strong album, mainly for fans of jazz rock/fusion, with good hints of avant-garde (somewhat RIO) and classical music. Their music is varied, although rooted on jazz and just the bass and the drums are showcases, so if you want to buy one Magma album, choose this one, because it is superb and will please most of the prog fans, unlike MDK, for example, that is highly praised by some and highly hated by others.