STUDIO ZÜND

This is the ultimate box for a MAGMA fan, because it was a limited edition (you cannot buy it anymore from Seventh Records) and some copies are being sold at Amazon and Ebay and because it celebrates the 40 years of musical evolution of one of the most important bands in the history of modern music.

The box is beautiful in the outside (as any box coming from MAGMA (think of the Offering boxset or the Trilogie one) and includes 10 discs and two of them are double CD which makes it a 12-CD box. I'll divide my review into two parts, the first one dedicated to the first 10 CDs and the second will be dedicated to the other 2 CDs.

1. The first 9 digipacks (10 CDs) are the very good to incredible studio albums released by MAGMA from 1970 to 1978. Digipack 9 is the loved/hated 'Merci' album, released in 1984 and the 10th is 'K.A.', an album released in 2004 that received very very good critics and quickly became a favorite for Zeuhl fans. So, for Zeuhl fans and advanced or avant-garde progrockers who own these recordings there's nothing new in terms of sound: is the music we all know and we (hopefully) own, no re-master or stuff like that. But the real treat is that they are digipacks, they have new artwork (nothing disruptive, just enough to match the box's artwork) but the biggest reward is the 30+ pages booklet included with each CD. The booklets are in French and in English.

The format of the booklets follows: 1.- Critical review of the album. 2.- Pictures of the particular incarnation. 3.- Christian Vander describing the process of giving birth to that particular MAGMA album. 4.- More pictures of that particular incarnation.

2. The last digipack is a double CD including early MAGMA previously unreleased music such as the demo for the first album, an outtake from MDK, a version of 'Eliphas Levi' with drums and the music from the movie '24 heures seulement' which will remind you of the 'Uniweria Zekt' recording.

So, in conclusion here we find a beautifully done boxset including all the material recorded by MAGMA "in the past". If you want to get this boxset could be a little bit late. If you have this: lucky you.