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"Shit He said to Himself, commenting on the terrible sight that could only mean it was all going down in ashes, for the sole purpose of witnessing its own miraculous reconstitution."
[from The Flame Within] Limited edition of 500 numbered 12" LPs + moody alien's book "The Flame Within" +/or Digital Album in 24-bit resolution including bonus track (FLAC strongly recommended). .................................................. Călin Torsan - clarinet, tenor recorder, voice & hulusi Andrei Kivu - The MIDIcello & effects moody alien - (processed) glockenspiel, vibraphone, windchimes, timpani & trumpet samples; (programmed) drums & double bass; keys, miscellaneous instruments & field recordings; effects & treatments featuring: Francesco Covarino - drums & percussion on #3 & 6 Kostas Tsoumanis - electric guitar on #2 Christos Pappas - electric bass guitar on #2 Thanks to Vasilis Bacharidis, P. Kapetanakis & George Avramidis. ..................................................................................................................................... Recorded in Granada, Paris, Thessaloniki & in the 14th century church of Sf. Margareta in Mediaș, Transylvania. Mixing, mastering & production by moody alien. Artwork design by Andreas Neophytou. ..................................................................................................................................... Released on April 13, 2019. ℗ & © Thirsty Leaves Music / Underflow Record Store & Art Gallery ..................................................................................................................................... moody-alien.weebly.com/magam.html |
REVIEWS.
"This international experimental collective carefully architects their haunting sound, generating immediate emotional impact."
The Bandcamp New and Notable section
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"MAGAM’s new album, Another, is a tour-de-force of eccentricity. The companion to the band’s 2017 debut, One, conceptually linked by a play written by a band member who goes by the mysterious name of “moody alien”, it avoids conventionality with a steely rigour. Yet this refusal to play by the rules does not sound nearly as perverse as you might expect. The record isn’t a black mass, inverting tropes to make its rebelliousness as obvious as possible, but a grey one, its far-flung components coming together to make music that is subtly deviant. [...]
In other words, whatever Another does or doesn’t sound like – some will hear traces of aleatory avant-garde jazz from the 1970s, others the stranger parts of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch – it still sounds more like music than meta-music. And that is undoubtedly a good thing. [...]
It is music to dream by, comfortable with the idea that we should not try to force our minds down any particular path. You can leave it on all day and hear something new on the tenth listen. That’s the mark of a truly great record."
Charlie Bertsch for Souciant
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"[...] Soundwise, Another is an album that roughly belongs in the contemporary experimental area, as it involves a variety of elements taken from completely different aesthetic backgrounds (tradition, avant-garde, jazz-improv, radical rock, electro-acoustic), shaped in such a way as to enthrall, through a terse, unforced and decidedly non-linear narration.
The word "terse" may sound odd at first, considering the multitude of instruments & "instruments" employed by the MAGAM members, but what you actually hear on Another is enveloped and completed in a manner that -providing the certitude of a basic "event" that is accompanied by other supplements- the individual sonic complexity becomes part of an initial clear and terse direction, set by a mid and somewhat ritual tempo and, of course, by the individual sonic "contributions" which enhance this feeling of improvisational structuring and perpetual flow. [...]"
Phontas Troussas for Diskoryxeion/Vinylmine (in greek)
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"Dark jazz is such an interesting niche that I’ve yet to fully explore. [...] I don’t stumble upon very many examples of this style every year, and the noteworthy releases from this bunch are even more sparse. But when done well, the genre can produce some exceptional music, as is the case on Another.
[...] Prepare for something weird, but also incredibly rewarding."
Scott Murphy for Heavy Blog Is Heavy
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"On [...] Another, two excellent Romanian instrumentalists join Alien: cellist Andrei Kivu (MaNKiL) and Călin Torsan (Multumult), playing clarinet, tenor flute and Chinese bamboo triple flute [...]. The album begins with a beat and jingle at the beginning of "That Little Flame". The clarinet's voice is immersed in it in the deepest voice and electronic gusts can be cut. However, the meditative, ambient mood will eventually win thanks to the central chorus of the clarinet. In InHabitAnts, guitarist Kostas Tsoumanis and bassist Christos Pappas join in to create a rhythmic flow that propels the noise wave forward and holds the freejazz wilderness of the clarinet and flute together. The song "A Reason", on the other hand, is light, ringing, with sensitive drums and percussion by another of the guests, the Italian Francesco Covarino. But the clarinet solo eventually reaches where it is best - freejazz. "Over and Over Again" is a more than six-minute mixture of ambient, free improvisation, noise attack and silence with tempted sampled brass. "Not an Ending" is made special by the electro-acoustically captured sound of a bell and the clarinet mess, which flows into the ambient surface. Drummer and percussionist Francesco Covarino interweaves the sometimes horror piece "Not With People Still Standing", which eventually absorbs the longing clarinet and the mysterious taste of ancient times. The finale is marked by the almost eleven-minute composition "… Behind Things" with a rough vibraphone bottom, flute haze and small noise eruptions; also enjoy an excellent flute solo, sinister electronic spotting and a meditative finish."
Jan Hocek for JazzPort.cz (in czech)
-------------------------------------------------
"[...] On the band's second work, succinctly titled Another, dark, tension-generating motifs and their sometimes chilled, sometimes cheerful counterparts enter into a multifaceted dialogue that rarely appears combative and mostly playful like a flirtatious dance. This is most obviously evident in the songs that frame the album - in the opener through the unresolved dichotomy of film-score-like droning and rumbling and wonderfully smooth saxophones, in the final track through the near amalgamation of roaring pounding with high-pitched euphoria to create an opaque atmosphere. A curved line seems to be coming full circle, but titles like “That Little Flame” and “Not With People Still Standing” do not really explain it, but rather allow vague short stories to pass by. Over the course of the six songs you always have the impression that hardly anything is left out here: menacing drones, woody rattles, jazzy snares, bells and computer game-like electronics - the sound-art elements in particular should not be overlooked, because they often form the inconspicuous foundation that gives the music its characteristic coloring and the more organic sections their foundation. [...]
The album was recorded in different places in Greece, Spain, France and in a Romanian church - which brings us back to the coherence mentioned at the beginning, because this doesn't detract from it in the least."
A.Kaudaht for African Paper (in german)
"This international experimental collective carefully architects their haunting sound, generating immediate emotional impact."
The Bandcamp New and Notable section
-------------------------------------------------
"MAGAM’s new album, Another, is a tour-de-force of eccentricity. The companion to the band’s 2017 debut, One, conceptually linked by a play written by a band member who goes by the mysterious name of “moody alien”, it avoids conventionality with a steely rigour. Yet this refusal to play by the rules does not sound nearly as perverse as you might expect. The record isn’t a black mass, inverting tropes to make its rebelliousness as obvious as possible, but a grey one, its far-flung components coming together to make music that is subtly deviant. [...]
In other words, whatever Another does or doesn’t sound like – some will hear traces of aleatory avant-garde jazz from the 1970s, others the stranger parts of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch – it still sounds more like music than meta-music. And that is undoubtedly a good thing. [...]
It is music to dream by, comfortable with the idea that we should not try to force our minds down any particular path. You can leave it on all day and hear something new on the tenth listen. That’s the mark of a truly great record."
Charlie Bertsch for Souciant
-------------------------------------------------
"[...] Soundwise, Another is an album that roughly belongs in the contemporary experimental area, as it involves a variety of elements taken from completely different aesthetic backgrounds (tradition, avant-garde, jazz-improv, radical rock, electro-acoustic), shaped in such a way as to enthrall, through a terse, unforced and decidedly non-linear narration.
The word "terse" may sound odd at first, considering the multitude of instruments & "instruments" employed by the MAGAM members, but what you actually hear on Another is enveloped and completed in a manner that -providing the certitude of a basic "event" that is accompanied by other supplements- the individual sonic complexity becomes part of an initial clear and terse direction, set by a mid and somewhat ritual tempo and, of course, by the individual sonic "contributions" which enhance this feeling of improvisational structuring and perpetual flow. [...]"
Phontas Troussas for Diskoryxeion/Vinylmine (in greek)
-------------------------------------------------
"Dark jazz is such an interesting niche that I’ve yet to fully explore. [...] I don’t stumble upon very many examples of this style every year, and the noteworthy releases from this bunch are even more sparse. But when done well, the genre can produce some exceptional music, as is the case on Another.
[...] Prepare for something weird, but also incredibly rewarding."
Scott Murphy for Heavy Blog Is Heavy
-------------------------------------------------
"On [...] Another, two excellent Romanian instrumentalists join Alien: cellist Andrei Kivu (MaNKiL) and Călin Torsan (Multumult), playing clarinet, tenor flute and Chinese bamboo triple flute [...]. The album begins with a beat and jingle at the beginning of "That Little Flame". The clarinet's voice is immersed in it in the deepest voice and electronic gusts can be cut. However, the meditative, ambient mood will eventually win thanks to the central chorus of the clarinet. In InHabitAnts, guitarist Kostas Tsoumanis and bassist Christos Pappas join in to create a rhythmic flow that propels the noise wave forward and holds the freejazz wilderness of the clarinet and flute together. The song "A Reason", on the other hand, is light, ringing, with sensitive drums and percussion by another of the guests, the Italian Francesco Covarino. But the clarinet solo eventually reaches where it is best - freejazz. "Over and Over Again" is a more than six-minute mixture of ambient, free improvisation, noise attack and silence with tempted sampled brass. "Not an Ending" is made special by the electro-acoustically captured sound of a bell and the clarinet mess, which flows into the ambient surface. Drummer and percussionist Francesco Covarino interweaves the sometimes horror piece "Not With People Still Standing", which eventually absorbs the longing clarinet and the mysterious taste of ancient times. The finale is marked by the almost eleven-minute composition "… Behind Things" with a rough vibraphone bottom, flute haze and small noise eruptions; also enjoy an excellent flute solo, sinister electronic spotting and a meditative finish."
Jan Hocek for JazzPort.cz (in czech)
-------------------------------------------------
"[...] On the band's second work, succinctly titled Another, dark, tension-generating motifs and their sometimes chilled, sometimes cheerful counterparts enter into a multifaceted dialogue that rarely appears combative and mostly playful like a flirtatious dance. This is most obviously evident in the songs that frame the album - in the opener through the unresolved dichotomy of film-score-like droning and rumbling and wonderfully smooth saxophones, in the final track through the near amalgamation of roaring pounding with high-pitched euphoria to create an opaque atmosphere. A curved line seems to be coming full circle, but titles like “That Little Flame” and “Not With People Still Standing” do not really explain it, but rather allow vague short stories to pass by. Over the course of the six songs you always have the impression that hardly anything is left out here: menacing drones, woody rattles, jazzy snares, bells and computer game-like electronics - the sound-art elements in particular should not be overlooked, because they often form the inconspicuous foundation that gives the music its characteristic coloring and the more organic sections their foundation. [...]
The album was recorded in different places in Greece, Spain, France and in a Romanian church - which brings us back to the coherence mentioned at the beginning, because this doesn't detract from it in the least."
A.Kaudaht for African Paper (in german)
