MAGMA

I don't think there are too many times in one's life when someone else manages to articulate your own feelings with such resonance and with such precision, that you feel they are somehow after your very own heart.

Well, a few weeks ago I'd been discussing music with Philip and without knowing too much of the biographical detail, had been commenting about the clear influences of jazz musicians Albert Ayler and John Coltrane on the amazing first album by the French group Magma, musical project of Christian Vander. And on Monday, to my great pleasure, Philip managed to dig up this brilliant essay that Vander had written about these very influences.

Way beyond the undoubtedly intriguing background detail, it expresses Vander's personal music philosophy in a way that's especially poignant for having chosen such an artistically isolated and disenfranchised path.