K.A (Köhntarkösz Anteria)

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AllMusic	[1]
Pitchfork Media	8.4/10 [2]

K.A (Köhntarkösz Anteria) is an album released by French progressive rock band Magma in 2004. The album was Magma's first full-length studio release in over 20 years. The material was largely composed by drummer Christian Vander in 1973–74, and fragments of it can be heard on Magma's 1977 live album Inédits.

K.A is sung almost entirely in Magma's constructed language Kobaïan, apart from a short passage in French ("Les Musiciens du Bord du Monde").

Track listing

1. "K.A I" – 11:12
2. "K.A II" – 15:53
3. "K.A III" – 21:43

Legacy

This album is part of the Köhntarkösz cycle of albums. It is the prequel to Köhntarkösz (1974). The final installment in the trilogy, released in November 2009, is Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê.

The Köhntarkösz trilogy describes the spiritual quest of two men to understand the intimate workings of the forces of the universe and achieve immortality. The quest was begun by Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who devoted his life to spiritual efforts, but who was murdered shortly before he could reach the final attainment.

Köhntarkösz tells the story of a modern archaeologist who discovers the location of Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê's tomb. He enters, and as he crosses slowly along the dark passages to the burial chamber, he hears a celestial voice and has visions of Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê's life. When he reaches the burial chamber and touches the tomb, the ancient dust seeps into his pores, and he has a momentary and devastating flash of understanding of the complete attainment of the ancient pharaoh. Waking, his flash of understanding lost in his normative consciousness, he then devotes his own life to recovering the achievements of Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê and carrying them to the final stage (his efforts and teachings, incidentally, may be the link to the remainder of Magma's mythology, the forming of a group of spiritualists who ultimately flee the decrepit Earth for a higher life on the planet Kobaïa).

The story of Köhntarkösz Anteria isn't told literally. Using the unofficial Kobaïan-French dictionary, Timothy Hannem wrote his own vision on the story of the album: “Köhntarkösz Anteria, an intermediate work between these narratives, begins with the celestial appraisal of the archaeologist figure. The voices announce that he will be a future prophet (Köhntarkösz) but at the moment is "sleeping", i.e. unaware of his future path and place in the spiritual history of the human race. The final section, a merging of two pieces originally known as Om Zanka and Gamma Anteria, deals with a youthful vision of the future Köhntarkösz, in which he journeys to a strange village where he is greeted with joyous cries of "halleluja!" and taken to the entrance of Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê’s tomb, at which a mysterious male voice bids him welcome and entreats him to enter. At this point, the album Köhntarkösz begins…”

Personnel

• Stella Vander – vocals, percussion
• Antoine Paganotti – vocals
• Himiko Paganotti – vocals
• Isabelle Feuillebois – vocals
• James Mac Gaw – guitars
• Emmanuel Borghi – piano, Fender Rhodes
• Frédéric d'Oelsnitz – Fender Rhodes
• Philippe Bussonnet – bass guitar
• Christian Vander – drums, vocals, percussion

External links

• Timothy Hannem's vision of KA (in French)
• Köhntarkösz Anteria at AllMusic
• Köhntarkösz Anteria at Discogs
• Köhntarkösz Anteria at www.progarchives.com

References