Eskaton - Montreiul 1985 (DVD)
It is the Golden Age of Zeuhl at dimeadozen.org, in fact if you’re a fan of the “genre,” you need an account. I wouldn’t have thought a live video of a band like Eskaton even existed, but wonders never cease. The DVD is billed as 90 minutes from a show in 1987 with 22 minutes of a show from 1985, but from everything I can tell the final 22 minutes is actually just a one cam audience recording of the same show and given the 1985 date, I’d say that’s when this is from. Most of the music seems to be from their unreleased I Care album which was recorded in 1985, in fact I was pretty sure I recognized the title track which was a bonus to the APM Four Visions release many years ago. By I Care, Eskaton weren’t really a Magma clone anymore, embracing some slight 80s/new wave stylings in bits, while not really abandoning the experimentation in the form, in fact they were probably more original at this point than earlier, but they’ve also lost a bit of punch with the two keyboards and no guitar line up (the bassist doubles very occasionally). Some of the dual vocal bits (the male keys player acts as a third, like a narrator) are eerie and unique, definitely outside the Vander playbook. The quality is surprisingly good, some audio drop outs and typical video fading, but you can basically see everyone. The concert seems to improve by the end where everyone is warmed up and the band starts to play with the Fiction repertoire a little. I was actually amazed at how few pieces I actually recognized, it seems as if Eskaton may have had at least an hour of unreleased music. A couple of these songs, often announced by a bouncy riff on whatever painful polyphonic keyboard they were using, were definitely worth leaving off whatever album came out and one gets the impression Eskaton probably broke up at the right moment. But these slight blemishes couldn’t overwhelm the sheer pleasure of getting to finally see this band, one which was a favorite of mine especially a decade or so ago.