OPO: ruins, magma

Ruins have same instrumentation as LB, and tend to play loud music like LB, but IMO that's where the similaries end -- specifically, Ruins come from a prog angle, and LB from a hardcore one. Also, better than Ruins is Koenjihyakkei (and "II" is my OPO pick).

(sorry, shoulda made the thread title more {or less} specific!)

oh, and...

http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/images/Bore-VCN.jpg

Other old bands who warped peoples' heads all up: Lard Free, Art Bears, Henry Cow, Video Aventures, Etron Fou, This Heat, Area, Heldon, Nurse With Wound, Suicide, Harmonia, Agitation Free, Muffins, Residents, Contortions, Igor Wakhevitch, Soft Machine, Albert Marcoeur, Shub Niggurath, Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, Moving Gelatine Plates, Cluster, early Tangerine Dream, Wha Ha Ha, Zamla Mammaz Manna

amon duul I could kinda sorta be compared to _beaches and canyons_ in that it's a bunch of communal racket. but not really.

German Art Punk Terrorists = Der Plan, pretty far away from original krautrock bands.

there are some interesting groups who kind of bridged the gap between krautrock and the neue deutsche welle/art punk stuff like s.y.p.h. (esp _pst!_, which is blatant can aping by a bunch of punks), the first two DAF albums, palais schaumburg, la dusseldorf, etc.

dleone's list is pretty cool, but some of the bands require a fair tolerance of prog/art rock bullshit. i'm lookin' at YOU, zamla mammaz manna and art zoyd....

Magma: go see them live if you can, or get Mechanik Destructiv Kommandoh (I think that's the spelling).

dude, nkPhe

Plus, Simples contains the single worst version of MDK ever, plus the incredibly bad "Klaus Kombalad". That said, I hate Art Zoyd, and probably shouldn't have listed them. Also said, Neue Deutsche Welle = next big hipster thing (though I always figured Palais Schaumburg was in that camp).

godheadsilo
ruins (other than stonehenge)
magma
luttenbachers (other than new album)
boredoms

Why not kill two birds with one stone and get Ruins BURNING STONE, which is basically Ruins' take on Magma?

Promise me that whatever you do, you won't sing along with Magma in Kobaiian.

i probably should've said that i have a fairly high tolerance for prog/art rock bullshit and that i love it dearly; thus, i freaking LOVE "klaus kombalad" to death. it's as close to fey as magma ever got... _simples_ got me into magma, at any rate, when _attahk_ made me cringe in horror.

as for the luttenbachers, _the truth is a fucking lie_ will core your apple (havohej cover! magma cover! yeahh!), _trauma,_ _alptraum_ and _infektion and decline_ are all good... i haven't heard a luttenbachers album i'd call bad, actually, but i only listen to them about once every 6 months. but that one time is like whoa.

also, the lightning bolt side project mindflayer - gre666t.

this band magma sound so heaRT-fuckingly incredible i shall feel incomplete until i get some

FWIW, the sea-gull sample is quite brief. There's another passage that sounds almost tango like.)

Well, in a nutshell, most of Magma's music is sung in a language of Christian Vander's invention called "Kobaian". This language was to have been the mothertongue of people from the planet Kobaia, who were at war with people from Earth, as detailed in his Theusz Hamtaahk trilogy (of which MDK is the last movement). I haven't made much of an effort to really follow the whole story (and can attest that the music is interesting enough on its own), but suffice to say, Tarkus has absolutely nothing on these guys.

"Zeuhl" (pronounced "tsoil"), in Vander's language, means "heavenly music", and that is what Magma's music is called. In fact, unlike Ruins' made up language, Kobaian actually means stuff (to Vander anyway), and there have been a few websites to attempt to translate all the records. I have a few translations in albums at home, but most are in French.

You do not know real terror until you have seen a legion of Men in Beards singing along to Magma in Kobaiian. I have seen it twice, and it was more frightening than you could possibly imagine.

I can't highly recommend enough those first three Amon Duul II records "Phallus Dei", "Yeti", or "Tanz Der Lemminge". If you're coming from a more spastic noisy backdoor, "Yeti" is certainly the one to go with. Although, in the end, I think "Tanz Der Lemminge" is the most rewarding, despite it requiring the most patience.

And please PLEASE do not confuse Amon Duul and Amon Duul II. Sure, they all allegedly spawned from the same dirthippie tidal pool/primordial mass of what have you, but Amon Duul II were far more solid, interesting, and coherent than any of the Amon Duul records (IMHO). I just wish ADII didn't tame so quickly from "Wolf City" on.

Live: Hhai (1975)
Attahk (1977)
Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh (1973) and/or Wurdah Itah (1974)

Ruins - Hmmm...either "Thebes", "Praha in Spring", or "Broken Head"

Magma - "Kohntarkosz", followed closely by "Zess"

and as for amon duul (I) - _psychedelic underground_ is a shambling, trance-inducing, distorted and beautiful mess that will either leave you totally unimpressed ("agh... hippies") or pummel your brain into melted blancmange. they also did _paradieswarts duul_, which is a much more mellow and proficient album of mellow acid-folk.

But I haven't heard Hyderomastgroningem, so that may very well be better.

As for the Koenjihyakkei side project, I only have Nivraym but it's great. Very Magma and much more prog than most Ruins stuff. I'd go here if you'd like to hear Ruins with a fuller sound/more conventional song structures.

Jon:

For Boredoms, search: VCN, Super Ae, and Super Roots 7. (I like the krautrock/psych/hippie side of the Boredoms much more than the earlier records)

I'm not looking forward to this (especially the Thurston Moore liner notes) but I know it's coming.

godheadsilo
-Skyward In Triumph
luttenbachers
-Destroy All Music

Those are, I'd say, the best releases by each band respectively. Destroy All Music though is a lot more free jazz and chaotic than the brutal prog stuff; a bit looser feel. As for Skyward In Triumph, it's the only album of their's I own, but it kicks some ass and stomps on some skulls.

i was reading a review of Infection & Decline on Amazon (a really reputable source) and the dude said they were a mix of King Crimson and death metal bands like Incubus

HAHAHAHAHAHA

new Ruins bassist is Natsuno Mitsuru, who also plays in Korekyojin, and has been in Altered States and Ground Zero. He's pretty amazing (as usual). Also, Ruins (w/Mitsuru) have a record w/Keiji Haino under the name Sanhedolin. They had formerly been known as Knead for a couple of LPs in the last few years.

Anyway, it's the only Magma I have and I love it...the choral stuff is bonkers!

fuck, I just figured out what this is - track from a 1971 live performance (Bruxelles), delayed, birdish sounds and contemplative piano at the beginning of 'Iss' Lansei Doia. better late than never

I am listening to Magma's "Inedits" -- totally rad bass / drums interplay. less vocal and rhodes shit

and now the b side.... lots more rhodes in store it seems... first track has pretty horn + electric guitar interplay

I'm watching the Myths and Legends Vol. III DVD right now. Benoit Widemann soloing on "Kohntarkosz" on some arcane Egyptian mode...wow.

there are tons of magma/christian vander videos on youtube but this is by far my favourite (apologies if ya'll have seen it before): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trEUcbABzBQ

I just had a neat ephiphany listening to Burning Stone. It was my first Ruins albums and outside of "Praha" I didn't really like it. To tell the truth I may have checked out during the middle section of "Zasca Coska". I think with Ruins there just isn't a good "jumping off" point because BS is probably their most accessible and it's still almost shockingly complex. They kinda have that Autechre thing going on where it just sounds like noise unless you're giving it full attention. At which point it just becomes mindblowing. One for the sheer volume of sound they're able to produce. You never think about the fact that it's just two guys, no guitarist. Two for the way they play together; you can't tell if the drums are following the bass or vice versa. I love the bits on ELP albums where Palmer plays out bits of Emerson's solos on the drums (such as on "Tarkus") and Ruins just does that all day. Lately I've been playing Burning Stone over and over in the car, once you "get" it it's astounding because there's 3-4 LPs worth of ideas on here condensed into like 50 minutes. Anyway this thread has been pretty neat, there's certainly a lot of common ground between these bands but the more I think about it the more it hits me how completely different these bands are, even though I feel they both appeal to the same area of the brain. Magma's the other one where I just want to get in the car take the long route everywhere and jam out.

man, "zasca coska" is the best!!! the riff they kick off with is unstoppable. well, until it sputters into chaos but that part is cool too. "zasca cosca," "praha," and "misonta" are prob my highlights for the album.

anyway, cool that it clicked for you, and yeah, I think you're on point with all of that. this is really DENSE music and part of the fun is just trying to follow along and piece it all together. that and just being blown away by the spectacle of it all. I listen to em the same way I would take in a death metal or harsh noise lp; it's a rush. very different from the 'transcendent' magma listening experience but lots of the pieces being used are indeed the same.

did you ever check out koenji?

Oh yeah, i'm on to it now! Oddly enough it's the most straightforward riff on the album! Right now I'm really digging everything but I really like the stretch of "Shostak Ombrick", "Vexoprakta", "Real Jam", and "Misonta". I don't know how I missed how catchy this stuff was the first time around. "Negotiation" and "Grubandgo" are both ace as well. I see how it's similar to the thrill of noise but I think the real proggy aspect of it is what really draws me to it; like I love how something like "Close to the Edge" will have so many great parts to it, and with Ruins it sometimes feels like it's all the good parts of a prog epic sped up to double speed and reduced to three minutes. Even the shorter stuff like "Onyx" is fascinating as they have lines that speed up as they're playing them, replicating the weird speed experiments that were on Neu! 2 without any mechanical help. For me a lot of times I have to be familiar with the music in some regard before I really can get into it and enjoy it and with Ruins that can be really difficult. On first or second listen if you're not really focused everything can just sound the same because your brain tunes out. I don't know what someone unfamiliar with the band would think of something like "Power Shift" which just presses the irritation button so damn hard.

As for Koenji I keep meaning to order the disc; I have one track from "Thousand Sights" on a comp and it's really ace - plus I've poked around Youtube a bit and think they're great; but have so much stuff to listen to right now. As I understand there's two versions of that album...which is the one to get?

yeah, "negotiation" is top notch. the catchy melodic bit that the song is centered on is exactly what I like about this era of ruins.

funny you should mention the "close to the edge" thing since that's kind of exactly what the medleys that show up on later ruins albums are. those don't work for me really but they are impressive as feats of musical dexterity.

and I don't recall much difference between the two versions of thousand sights but it's been a while since I spun that album. I'd prob go with the remaster since the shimmy disc remaster of nivraym is much improved.

I've heard the Yes medley (though I think that was Yoshida's other other band, Korekyojin) and it's ace but yes not very relistenable. what I mean is how a lot of bands that do long stuff take time to really jam out or build one theme into another while Ruins just kinda slams it all together.

Right now I'm listening to some real obscure album I got off Slsk called Magaibutsu, I have no idea what exactly it is (and Google is no help. apparently nobody knows of it), but it's clearly Yoshida solo - drums, vocals, keyboards, a bit of guitar, not really polished and kinda fillerish but still entertaining; it's not as densely packed as ruins but it allows you to hear some truly wonky rhythmic things in the works, plus it's stupidly long (over 70 minutes!) And I have to believe he just pounded it out some time between Stonehenge and Burning Stone. His RYM page is ridiculous as he's done so much and I'm starting to wonder if you can actually ignore any of it.

you'd probably like Koenji a lot -- it seems more along the lines of what you are into than Ruins, in terms of "prettier" melodies

yeah, agreed. I definitely prefer koenji myself.

okay well i'll definitely order some tonight!

Get Nivraym!

yeah, it's awesome!!

thinking about just getting them all. realistically there's a 0% chance I don't like them

Yeah, they are all cool albums, and moat importantly, they ware cool in different ways and it's fun to figure out what works and why. Not a bad move imo. (though I am partial...)

MOST importantly, oof

listened to Hundred Sights a couple times and its definitely incredible. I'm actually not too sure about the Magma comparisons but there really isn't much else you can compare them to. really it is just Ruins as a five-piece band, which is kind of an odd concept since Ruins doesn't need the help. I mean shit, Magma has a lot of quiet sections on their albums - outside of one track, these guys just don't let up. I suppose its the kind of album that'll reveal itself the more I listen to it, which is generally the case for Ruins.

Did you get the Skin Graft reissue with the re-recorded drums? That's the one I have. I'm curious what the original sounded like, but I guess not curious enough to track it down.

i'm 99% sure it's the Skin Graft one. I'm curious as well; maybe the original kinda had that MDK thing going on, where you can't really hear the drums?

I suppose, but it seems like re-mixing the album to make the drums louder could have solved that.

I've got the original, drums sound fine to me

I suspect Yoshida is perhaps a bit of a perfectionist - I wonder if it was the performance or the recording itself that he wanted to redo.

Man, I'd you think Hundred Sights... is unrelenting (which it is!), wait til you get to Viva Koenji/II. It's wild.

okay - to answer your question o.nate - I got the original 1994 release and really a lot different! The drums are less "industrial" and actually not as wild - the drum track from the 2008 is completely nuts, while the original tones it tone. But there are also a lot of differences in everything else - a different vocal take on "Doi Doi", for instance. The melody on "Yagonahh" is mostly guitar instead of those circus keyboards. Zhess has a different vocal track - low vocals instead of high ones. As a whole I think the remaster is a bit brighter and perhaps crazier. This is really such an amazing album. I can't believe how stupidly gorgeous "Zoltan" is, especially considering that it's totally out of left field.