Album: Magma, Studio Zünd, (Le Chant du Monde)

The complete studio works, spread over 11 discs. Magma were (and somehow still remain) a French ensemble founded 40 years ago to express an apocalyptic vision of the failing universe.

Their leader, Christian Vander, invented both a language in which the group’s works might be sung and a musical idiom which hybridised the operatic-choral style of Carl Orff with the bass-heavy thunder of enormo-rock – they weren’t so much ahead of their time as reinventors of it. An acquired taste.

Pick of the album: ‘Hortz Fur Dehn Stekehn West’: cor blimey