Produced by Heldon.
Submitted by PhC.
Heldon
Interface (Heldon 6)
Cuneiform
1977
Wayside Music
After a couple of disappointing Heldon purchases I finally found an album I can say I really like out of them with Interface. This album features all the Moogalicious electronic wizardry and Robert Fripp-styled guitar solos Heldon is famous for in a package that's cohesive and relatively easy to digest.
This album features Francois Auger, Patrick Gauthier (of Magma and Weidorje fame) on keyboards and Mr. Heldon himself, Richard Pinhas on guitar. These three excellent musicians create some very ahead-of-its time music with this 1977 recording. Fast, repetitive Moog sequences, calling to mind (but predating) modern dance/rave music, and weird electronic noises create most of the background on which Pinhas excecutes his anguished guitar solos which virtually scream his apprciation of King Crimson's Robert Fripp.
Along with Fripp, Magma's and possibly Tangerine Dream's influences may be present, but Heldon brings all these disparate elements together into a completely unique whole.
The music is intense, heavy and at times extremely repetitive in the good way of which Magma and Univers Zero are good examples. The approximately 20-minute title track is probably the masterpiece on this album, building slowly from a percussive moog and drum riff into an avant-garde frenzy of noisy guitar soloing. The last few seconds of this track finishes off the album on a comical note - a cheesy standard blues /rock & roll riff, a tongue-in-cheek musical throwback to an earlier Heldon album title, It's Always Rock & Roll.
Nothing sounds quite like Heldon, and this album seems like a good disc with which to start for those not familiar with them.
Heldon [France]
Updated 3/23/01
Discography
Electronic Guerilla (74)
Allez Teia (75)
It's Always Rock and Roll (75)
Heldon IV (76)
Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale (76)
Interface (77)
A Dream Without (78)
Stand By (79)
Reviews
A sound best described as industrial electronics meets Frippian guitar, altho some albums (like Allez Teia) are fairly spacy and quiet compared to others (like Interface), which contain some really agressive and noisy stuff. The core lineup was Richard Pinhas (Guitar), Patrick Gauthier (Synthesizer), and Francois Auger (drums), with other musicians dropping in and out.
Allez Teia, from the group fronted by Richard Heldon, the French Fripp, features the music of mellotrons and processed guitars and other forms of electronics. The music is regarded as a classic of the early French electronic music scene, though you will not see images of Jarre in here!
It's simply astounding what one person can accomplish with one guitar, one synth and enough vision. And Richard Pinhas shows no shortage of vision on Heldon I - Electronique Guerilla/Heldon III - It's Always Rock and Roll, an excellent 2cd package, which contains 3 albums in essence since Heldon III was originally a double album. The style here is more minimalist than on the later Heldon stuff like Interface or Stand By, but nonetheless Pinhas milks his gear for everything its worth to produce strikingly futuristic, dark, aggressive music that also has a quirky sense of serenity too. The original recording dates for these works are 1974 and 1975, but they *still* sound way ahead of their time today. Highly-charged, powerful music, and a welcome addition to anyone's Heldon collection. Also a great place to start for those new to Heldon, since this package is a great value buy.
If any of you are confused as to why Richard Pinhas is the "French Fripp," pick up Stand By. The title track is a 14 minute guitar assault that would make Mr. Fripp blush. Much more aggressive than their early releases, this Heldon album features Patrick Gauthier (of Magma/Weidorje fame) on a wide array of keyboards available in 1979. Gauthier's compositional contribution to the album, Une Drole de Journee, is complex enough to be mistaken for a Weidorje track. In short, a far cry from the ambience of Electrique Guerrilla. The remaining track, a 21 minute suite called "Bolero," is more like early Heldon, but not much. Swirling synthesizer loops share stage with bold guitar solos and intermittent drumming. I recommend this album for everyone searching for the conceptual link between "Paul Atreides" and Red. And besides, the title track shreds so hard I needed a band aid.
Heldon was/is the French guitarist/synthesist Richard Pinhas with the most frequent collaborator Georges Grunblatt on synths. The music can range from abstract electronics (most of Heldon 6: Interface) to Frippian guitar over a bed of electronics (Heldon I and II) to meltdown rock guitar over seething synthesizers (Heldon 7: Stand By). 7 is my current favorite, especially the 21 minute long track Bolero, which has strong late-70's Tangerine Dream influence (especially the sequencers). Most of this music needs a good listening to before appreciating, as at first listen the music is very abstract. 7 is easier to get into, as it is more "song-structured" than the previous efforts. Pinhas's later solo material (East/West and L'Ethitque) is also more "song-structured" than some of his earlier material. Fans of Frippertonics should check out the 22-minute long "Wintermusic" on Iceland.
Okay, last issue's article about Heldon just wasn't that great. It was written in my oft-bogus 'as it's happening' style. I think it was a fine example of that style, but hey, the thing about oft-bogus styles is that they're often bogus. What's more, the article ended before I had really listened to the 5th, 6th, and 7th Heldon albums (Un Reve Sans Consequence Special, Interface, and Stand By respectively), which are crucial pieces of the puzzle. While the article did have some great pictures, its premature ending did not clearly state any real thesis at all except a vague "I might quit making fun of this stuff because the more I listen to it I realize that I like it." Now that I like it so much I'm listening to it every day, I would like to offer this revisitation of the Heldon topic, in order to state two theses of a more well-considered nature, which I have arrived at after said ongoing study.
THESIS ONE: Though often described as a 'prog rock' band, Heldon is better described as one of the first 'drone rock' bands. Off-kilter Euro-prog elements can be felt in Heldon's music, most overtly with the 7th and final album, Stand By, and in Heldon founder/leader Richard Pinhas's later solo work, such as the rather dreadful East/West. However, I equate 'prog' more with the complex multiple-riff music of early Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes, King Crimson, and et al, as well as with their more underground contemporaries, the 'Canterbury' school of bands, and Heldon isn't even vaguely comparable to any of the above. Of course prog has a broader definition than this, but I think most will agree that for something to be 'prog' it should exhibit skilled musicianship of some kind along with multi-part 'suite-like' song forms. In short, an extensive fusion between rock, classical, folk, and jazz music(s), and believe me, the end result usually sounds just as stuffy. Heldon is barely any of these genres. Heldon does have Pinhas's electric guitar soloing, which is in fact very prog, but every other element of the band, especially on the first three discs, is much more primitive, as in the very first rumblings of something new kind of music, that is barely even rock and roll, even though that's Heldon's final description of it. (See their second album, "It's Always Rock & Roll".) With supreme millenial irony, the primitivism comes almost entirely from a once-futuristic ARP synthesizer, as most Heldon pieces are centered around one simple synth drone, more of a cybernetic cycle given sound-form than the 'suites' and 'movements' and 'arias' that most progressive rock bands depend on.
THESIS TWO: There are two phases to Heldon's oeuvre. The first phase was a more serene and dreamy solo approach by Pinhas. On the 1974 debut Electronique Guerilla, there are only two tracks that are not Pinhas solo. On the second album Allez Teia, Heldon has become a duo with the addition of Georges Grunblatt on guitar, synthesizers, and mellotron. The third album, the double LP "It's Always Rock and Roll", is Pinhas solo for 4 of the 9 tracks. All of these albums are heavy on the aforementioned cybernetic synthesizer drone, but despite its inherently cold and menacing machine-sound, there is an overriding 'pastoral' quality about these records, what one webzine referred to as something like "an odd serenity at the center." This is because this is largely solo music, just as immediate 'future-pastoral' predecessors like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream (mach 2) were centered around solo dronescapes crafted by Florian Fricke and Edgar Froese respectively.
Heldon moved far beyond these preliminary influences with its fifth and sixth albums, Un Reve Sans Consequence Special and Interface. Here, Pinhas's revolving cast of supporting characters started to firm into a power trio lineup. All but 8 minutes of Un Reve were trio works, and all tracks featured Pinhas's drones and solos pinned down by enormous John Bonham backbeats by one Francois Auger. All but 2 tracks featured one Patrick Gauthier playing monster Mini-Moog basslines. On the next album, Interface, this trio played 6 of the 8 tracks. (Both albums feature a sizzling Pinhas/Auger duo as well as one track on which Gauthier is pinch-hit for by the splendidly named Didier Batard (of legendary zuhl rockers Magma) on bass.
These albums display a sound incomparable to anything that had come before. Heldon didn't abandon the droning layered electro-pulse, but developed it into a much heavier future-shock sound that has actually been called 'electronic punk,' also described by Jimmy Johnson on the Forced Exposure website as "an intense jamming throb" and "a crushingly dense synthesis of loud sounds." The hard edge that could always be felt in Pinhas's psybernetic drone-patches was fully accentuated by Augier's monstrous disco breakbeats. Gauthier, with what Pinhas described as "his brilliant sophistic mind," made the cybernetic interweavings of Heldon's sound more complex and dizzying than before by adding angular low-end melodies that overlapped hypnotically with Pinhas's layers of electro-pulse.
This increased complexity can certainly suggest a 'prog' tag, but that Heldon drone never goes away. Rather than having multiple 'movements' on several different vocal and instrumental themes, Heldon creates their multiple movements only out of the barely different psybernetic combinations that can occur within one single 'aumgn' tonality. When this dense machine stew is underpinned by the life-force of Auger's stunning free-form Bonhamesque power drumming, Heldon achieve a swirling density that has been described as "frightening" and "violent" more than once, most memorably (on some website that I didn't bookmark and can no longer find) as staring into the open mouth at the spinning, whirling teeth of a dangerous android! (This just in: by doing a search for "heldon teeth" on Google I found it, the exact description (by comic artist Matt Howarth) being "like falling into a huge mechanoid maw full of gleaming patchcord teeth." Turns out to be from Sonic Curiosity, an extensive experimental music website by Howarth.) In addition to this "gleaming mechanoid maw" approach, Heldon also developed a strange sort of lumbering rubbery low-end robot-elephant funk -- Interface is weirdly funky like this throughout, but for a blatant example listen to "MVC II" from Un Reve Sans Consequence Special, with Pinhas on various Moogs, Auger on drums, and Didier Batard's bass guitar pinch-playing for Gauthier's Mini-Moog. In either case Heldon sounded like a gang of robots come to life, or like Robocop mechanically marching down some inner-city alleyway as he bears down on a criminal. (And maybe that's an even earlier robocop pictured on the cover of Interface?)
Stand By, the seventh and last album bearing the name of Heldon (although a new one with lyrics by Norman Spinrad is apparently in the works), is a favorite among prog heads. This is understandable because it is the only Heldon album to de-emphasize the drone in favor of actual rock riffs, even if their end result is still a near-hurricane of mad jazz-prog fusion. It is certainly a heavy-ass album, but something isn't quite right for me -- I miss the earlier albums when a Heldon track was just 'one' riff, a tranced-out bubbling/interweaving drone stew. The more actual 'riffs' and 'movements' and 'changes' I hear, the more my 'prog dreck' flag goes up. Simply put, I miss the primitivism. If you're a wealthy primitivist, you should buy all seven Heldon albums in order, definitely saving Stand By for last. If you're a wealthy prog head, you might want to go in reverse order. And, if you're poor like most of us and don't volunteer at a community radio station well-stocked with Heldon discs like I do, go straight to either Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale or Interface and you will find a sound like no other. (Interface might be about two percent better than Un Reve Sans Consequence Special, and anyway it has the best cover art of any Heldon album .)
Pinhas has made statements that suggest he's no longer all that proud of the early albums. I find the first phase of Heldon quite mesmerizing and certainly in the same league as the work it is inspired by, but I can see why Pinhas would be down on it. Upon analysis, it could actually be described as 'derivative,' where the later stuff is its own original monster, for and of and from the space-age.
Heldon/Pinhas Reviews
From: Michael S Eisenberg
> Heldon - Stand By, is this any better than "Interface"?
I think interface is THE best Heldon disc...but Stand By is pretty damn phenomenal. The latter is more of a band effort and it smokes hard...but I think Interface just rips the brain cells apart, especially at high volume. I just listened to it about a week ago...when it was over I couldnt even get up from the couch, the intensity was so hot. Just to give you a general idea of the sound of Interface, imagine those Big Moogs of olden days playing a sequenced pattern that is ever changing, on top of this add Fripp like guitar (only sloppier and rawer...a good thing imho) and extremely agile drumming that just drives the music forward at high velocity and you got Interface. The little blues lick at the very end of disc never ceases to make me smile..sort of reminds me of the very end of Fracture when Fripp lets the one note decay and Bruford slams the thunder sheet. I love Heldon...collect them all!!!
From: Michael S Eisenberg meisenberg@earthlink.net
Richard Pinhas/John Livingood-Cyborg Sally: This is a good one. If your familiar with Pinhas's solo output you will know what to expect, as this is mostly him, his Frippish guitar, and his industrial robotic electronics (slightly updated for the nineties..but only slightly). If not, I think alot of people on this list might like this. Raw intense and energetic...an e-prog2 album with balls!!!
From: michael eisenberg
We are extremely proud to present, in cooperation with the French Cultural Services in Chicago, The Richard Pinhas & Maurice Dantec Schizospheric Experience, French readings of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy with metatronic music and vocal processors...:)) (Yep, that is the "official" name of the tour!!) This show will be Thursday, March 11th at Martrys', 3855 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago. The phone number is (773) 404-9494. This is the first time Richard has visited the states and this will be his first show here before he heads to the east coast for a couple more. Expect an evening of ambient soundscapes that cover the whole spectrum from stormy harsh electronics to floating, blissed out deep space excursions. Richards playing is not unlike Robert Fripp's Frippertronics but, in my opinion it is much more varied in the sound sources he uses, thus making the soundscapes much more shifting and less static. As for some background info...Richard Pinhas is one of the most radical and important musicians from the French underground scene of the 70's.He is the brains behind the now famous "cult band" Heldon, which borrows it's name from a Norman Spinrad book "The Iron Dream". Heldon was a pioneer in many aspects: it was the first attempt at self production within France, offering an alternative to the major record companies who often imposed constraints upon the artists. The band was also the very first to follow in the footsteps of avant-garde electronic musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno... in fact Richard is often referred to as "the French Fripp".
Throughout Heldon's 8 album career there were many top-notch musicians and innovators from the French underground scene involved, including Patrick Gauthier, Janick Top, Bernard Paganotti and Klaus Blasquiz. The music was extremely agressive and it was named by an American journalist as "the first electronic punk band". Heldon has a force and a violence in it's music which is truly unbelievable, and which is at the core and basis of nowadays electro-industial music as well as techno. In 1979, Heldon went on hiatus, allowing Richard to pursue a very prolific solo career. After a total of 17 albums, Richard is finally back on stage and will release two new albums in early 99.
Maurice Dantec makes his first mark on French culture in the early 80's with his punk, counter-culture technoid band Artefact. After numerous jobs, he becomes a full time writer and publishes hard-boiled/techno-punk novels in the very famous Gallimard/La Serie Noire. His first novel, "La Sirene Rouge" is published in 1993 and is a huge success breaking many of the day's preconceived notions of writing. In 1995 he writes "Les Racines du Mal", a William Gibson, Philip K. Dick influenced novel which catapults him into the upper echelon of French literary culture. His third novel entitled "Babylon Babies" will be published in 1999.
The new album, called "Le Plan" will be out on the Sub Rosa label later this year. Live, Richard pierces the dawns light with his feverish and harsh guitar solo's and Maurice "works live" on his voice through computers, reading Deleuze's texts.
From: michael eisenberg
Just to whet some appetites for the upcoming Richard Pinhas show, (Martyrs', Thursday, March 11th, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago (773) 404-9494) I would like to take an opportunity to describe what a live Pinhas show is like. Unfortunately there isn't much documented accounts of performances by either him or his band Heldon, but I did manage to come across an article in the British new-music magazine "Audion" by Nigel Harris of a show in London with fellow traveler John Livengood. The show was in 1993 but I feel it is a good representation of what to expect at Martyrs', with the added vocal presence of Maurice Dantec. To
paraphrase from that article:
"The large stage seemed strangely empty in the half light as the two emerged from the shadows. Richard took up one of his guitars which fed a Roland guitar synthesizer and assorted effects units, and let rip an awesome wall of noise. The collision of notes and the tortured and anguished cries of the instrument was instantly recognizable as his own style. Meanwhile, John Livengood took up position at an array of computer equipment: an Apple Macintosh taking samples from two CD ROM machines. Huge metallic tones filled the theater accompanying Richard's relentless visceral onslaught. There was a chilling, clinical atmosphere, and a paradoxical notion entered my mind that such perverse anxiety and emotion was being created using inhuman machines. Through this electronic haze, Richard as ever directed the affective flow. After what seemed like an eternity, John set up a strong rhythmic pattern and an unbalanced sequencer run (totally unlike groups like
Tangerine Dream) over which Richard improvised. The electronic percussion and sequences slowly shifted perspective and emphasis. This plateau-like composition came across as a kind of extremely heavy minimalism."
"It seemed like being on the threshold of total chaos. This was a totally uncompromising performance. No concession was made to dramatic chord changes. There were almost no conventional melodic lines. After almost an hour both performers exited the stage leaving the machines to play themselves: staccato electronic-like aquatic sounds washed over the enthusiastic audience."
Richard's performance is cosponsored by the French Cultural Services in Chicago and tickets are available at the door or thru Ticket Master.
Playing in support will be Boxmedia artists T.V. Pow, a seven piece consisting of 2 drummers, double bass, trumpet, electronics, sampler, 18 string steel "bass", laptops and guitar. I'm told that the ensemble will be playing one long piece and possibly a short one as well. The long piece will be a variation on a Morton Feldman composition. The duo will also be playing these dates on the east coast and Canada:
March 2nd - University of Arts [Musee d'art contemporain] - Montreal, Quebec
March 14th - Knitting Factory - 74 Leonard St., NYC [with Nick Didkovsky & Larval]
March 15th - Middle East Restaurant - 472/480 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA [with Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic]
March 19th - St. Mary's Church - 3916 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA (610) 734-1009 [info]
March 20th - Phantasmagoria - 11319 Elkin St., Wheaton, MD [near Washington DC] [with Pelt] (301) 949-8886
From: "Mark Fonda" cross-post from Groove_Unlimited@egroups.com: RICHARD PINHAS - L'ETHIQUE (1982) This album is generally regarded as the magnum opus of Richard Pinhas and rightly so, because it's consistently strong and highly energetic, the culmination of some ten years in the business. It was almost his last as well, because it took another ten years before Pinhas finally got around to finishing and releasing follow-up album "DWW", for a long time feeling he had nothing left to say after "L'Ethique". As always with Richard Pinhas, philosophy and radical politics play their part here: the album-title identifies a work by 17th-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza, French colleague Gilles Deleuze does voices on a couple of pieces and the haunting 'Belfast' track sounds like it probably refers to the IRA- related hunger-strikes in a Belfast prison in the early eighties. But all this shouldn't defer attention from the music, which is the most successful blend of guitar- and electronic music up to that point in Pinhas' oeuvre. The four parts of the title-track spread out over the album illustrate this perfectly: the first two are strong electronic tracks with a slight futuristic SF-feel really enhanced by long-held guitar-chords in the background and heavy rock-percussion. The third part seemingly picks up the thread some time after the previous two broke down, when only the sequencer and guitar are left, joined after a while by some quite astonishing percussion. Pinhas plays some of his best guitar here, and his impassioned multi-layered outbursts get ever more chromatic, before a few bell-like sequencers take over in the short final part. The gaps inbetween this musical backbone are filled by more great tracks (there's not a single bad piece to be found on this album), of which two should be singled out: the second 'Western Wail' is one of those cyclic electronic pieces Pinhas is so good at a slightly melancholic tune evolving through many key- changes helped along nicely by Georges Grunblatt on Minimoog (who joins virtually all former Heldon-members to play on this album). And 'Dedicated to K.C.' which is a tribute to King Crimson and really sounds like Fripp & co, a virtuoso symphonic rock-piece which apparently dates from 1978 because it also appears as a bonus-track on the "Interface" album reissue. On this 1991 Cuneiform CD-release of "L'Ethique" there's also a bonus-track called 'Southbound', a pretty hectic piece taken from a concert recording. Conclusion: for those who enjoy strong, interesting music played by a group of superb musicians in a hot Parisian summer, this album will always be a good buy. 2000 (c) Ivar de Vries
Heldon
Electronique Guerilla/It's Always Rock 'n' Roll
Cuneiform
1973(?)/1975
New Sonic Architecture
Heldon must be one of the most underrated bands in the field of progressive rock. This is perplexing given the quality of the group's music, especially on this set. Electronique Guerilla/It's Always Rock 'n' Roll is nothing short of amazing. This two-CD set compiles Heldon's first and third albums. They compliment each other well, so the continuity from one to the next is nearly seamless. The music on these two albums is groundbreaking even by today's standards. In the early '70s, it must have sounded as if it came from outer space. In fact, it is tempting to lump these albums in with the "kosmiche" or space music genre of progressive rock typified by German bands and artists like Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel or Klaus Schulze. It seems likely that these exerted at least some influence on Heldon's main man Richard Pinhas, but there are other forces at work here which make Heldon unique. Pinhas was also under the sway of English bands like King Crimson, Soft Machine and Matching Mole. The most obvious influence from England is undoubtedly the guitar playing of Robert Fripp. (On the second Heldon album there is even a piece titled "In the Wake of King Fripp"!) Pinhas seems not the least bit ashamed to mimic Fripp's distinctive "laser beam" sound and technique, but set against the backdrop of droning and gurgling synthesizers it creates a completely different atmosphere from just about anything Crimson ever did. However, there is one track on this set, that sounds as if it was created in an attempt to see how close Pinhas could come to recreating Fripp and Eno's "Swastika Girls" from the legendary No Pussyfooting album. It's another slice of loveliness for those who wish there was more recorded Frippertronics available.
Another great piece is "Cotes de Cachalot ala Psylocybine." This eight minute soundscape pits ominous synth echoes against a wailing, moaning, distant sounding electric guitar solo. Like most of this set, that's all there is to it. No drums, vocals nor a hint of traditional song structure, just complete electronic mesmerization.
Disc two starts off with the massive "Aurore." This 18-minute piece begins and ends with a drone note melded from an analog synth and a harmonium. An ultra-mellow synth melody develops and interlaces itself slowly around the constant drone. More than once this writer has fallen asleep enveloped in this piece's analog cocoon only to be jolted awake by the all out guitar assault of "Zind Destruction" three tracks later. This is the lone heavy piece on the entire set. Whatever "Zind" is, it definitely gets completely destroyed by the end. This track foreshadows Heldon's more rhythmic proto-industrial guitar and synth noise fests found on later albums like Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale and Interface.
This set is absolutely essential listening for anyone interested in electronic music and is guaranteed to blow away most people's ideas of what cutting edge music sounds like.
