zi Studio

Ẁurdah Ïtah is a 1974 album by Magma/Christian Vander. The album was recorded by a core quartet of Magma members (only consisting of drums, bass, piano, and vocals). Initially released under Vander's name as a soundtrack studio album for Yvan Lagrange's 1972 avant-garde film Tristan et Iseult, it was re-released on Magma's label Seventh Records in 1989 with the Magma logo on its cover, and is generally regarded as a Magma album.

John Lindberg is known for two particularities: he’s one of the most exquisite double bassists around for some decades already and each one of his projects, be it a studio recording or a concert, is a meticulous and wonderfully sustained concept, always with a motto or a theme transcending musical subjects, generally concerning nature or the human condition. His brand new “Born in an Urban Ruin” belongs to this last category: the mentioned «urban ruin» is the Detroit Osteopathic Hospital, where he was born in 1959. You can’t get more symbolic than with this combination of two opposed factors, “birth” and “decadence.” If there’s in this collection of compositions a «post-industrial rust belt aesthetic», to use Lindberg’s own words, the perspective is positive and full of hope – the music is all about survival, «it’s endurance, it’s the spirit emerging forever triumphant». You can resurrect on a ruin, and when this idea is staged by someone like John Lindberg, with the help of clarinetist Wendell Harrison and of vibraphonist and percussionist Kevin Norton, that process can only be a beautiful one. A tribute in three parts to the late Roy Campbell is included, because the great jazz trumpeter is still among us and, after all, this CD is an ode to life.