Heldon

Artist: Heldon
P: 1976 / 2018
On their fourth album, released for the first time in 1976, Richard Pinhas and his changing co-musicians continue to explore the hypnotizing Heldon sound universe. "Agneta Nilsson" begins with a track that impressively proves that standstill can also have a pulse. "Perspective I" mills its way through tectonic layers of sound for ten minutes, achieving such an intensity that the song acts like quicksand on the brain. It is certainly one of Heldon's most frightening works, and its simplicity makes it even more impressive. It consists solely of amplified sounds thrown together. These are the essential elements of Pinhas' magic, presented here with maximum pressure. As usual, the following tracks on "Agneta Nilsson" deviate greatly from this opening. The pieces almost rebelliously refuse to be imitated - despite the fact that four of the five tracks are also entitled "Perspective" and that they are chapters of a thematic whole.

Artist: Heldon
P: 1975 / 2018
Reissue of the second album from 1975, on which Richard Pinhas forms a duo with Georges Grunblatt. Even before Richard Pinhas began making music in the early 1970s, he was a fan of King Crimson. The British band's music has never left him, but their influence was certainly greatest at the very beginning. This is particularly evident on Heldon's second album, "Allez-Teia." It was released in 1975 on Pinhas's own label, Disjuncta. The opening song, a floating mix of Mellotron sounds and a smeared guitar, is titled "In The Wake Of King Fripp." This double reference refers both to the band's guitarist Robert Fripp and to "In The Wake Of Poseidon," the second King Crimson album. The meditative "Omar Diop Blondin," with its free-floating notes over a repetitive guitar figure, is explicitly dedicated to Brian Eno and Fripp. Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine was also a major influence on Pinhas. Nevertheless, "Allez-Teia" is not a tribute album. The pieces that Pinhas created with his partner Georges Grunblatt appear joyfully beautiful at first glance, but they all carry a tense undercurrent. They form an interplay of feather-light acoustic guitar, Mellotron carpets, fuzz sounds, and heavy, ethereal synthesizer tones.

Artist: Heldon
P: 1974 / 2018
Debut album by the groundbreaking French space rock electro project (1974). Heldon = Richard Pinhas with a variety of guest musicians on different tracks.The music: a psychedelic sonic symbiosis of a 1954 Gibson Les Paul and an EMS Synthi AKS.

Artist: Heldon
P: 1977 / 2020
A brilliant moment occurs right at the end of 1977's Interface. The album's final song, its side-long title track, builds up slowly into a roaring tornado of fiercely mutating drum patterns, effervescent synth work, and guitar licks that wail into the atmosphere like an abandoned astronaut. Then, after nearly nineteen minutes of highly futuristic avant-garde space rock, this ultramodern music fades out and is replaced by a concluding few seconds of traditional blues-rock guitar. »We were finishing the track, the tape was rolling, and I started to play a normal boogie or whatever«, remembers Heldon leader Richard Pinhas. »I think it was a good idea to keep it. It just came naturally, at the end.«

Artist: Heldon
P: 1975 / 2018
Third album from the French spacerock electro combo masterminded by Richard Pinhas. Heldon's darkest work lays another stone in their sonic mosaic: synths,drones, fuzz and trippy improvisations. Intense Heldon!! There's something wicked happening on Heldon's third album It's Always Rock and Roll. Richard Pinhas' essential attack of searing guitar and space-bound synthesizer didn't change radically after the first two Heldon albums, 1974's Electronique Guerilla and 1975's Allez-Teia. But there's dark energy coursing through this double album, a chilly aura that makes even the quietest pieces shiver with tension. ""At this time, I tried to turn Heldon into a darker band,"" Pinhas admits. ""But dark is not negative to me."" The darkness of It's Always Rock and Roll is more about exploring what's hidden and overturning convention - about diving beneath bright surfaces to find something more mysterious. If It's Always Rock and Roll stands up in Heldon's catalog, perhaps it's due to expansion - both in the sense of big ideas and lengthy durations. Most tracks last over seven minutes, and two are side-covering epics. ""I think the length of a track is part of the creation of the track,"" says Pinhas. ""There are imperatives. You can do something very complex with a lot of events in four minutes, and then some other things need to be done very slowly. You have to do the length that it demands."" ""We recorded this after having met with Philip K. Dick in California for two days,"" recalls Pinhas. ""It was such an event for a 23-year old; he was to me one of the last real prophets. We talked about Jung, we talked about a lot of things. Maybe this encounter gave birth to all of Heldon Third."" So the sci-fi master spawned a dark audio creation to rival his own work. Like the Heldon albums that precede it, It's Always Rock and Roll is undoubtedly Pinhas' baby. But its depth-probing sounds earned it a godfather, too.

Artist: Heldon
P: 2024
LTD 500
Le Plan’ consists of four tracks from that album given new life after being remixed by Pinhas in 2023. The very first time that this music has been made available on LP format, it has been somewhat overlooked in the Heldon oeuvre, yet more than ever it predicted and reflects the world as it is now. Welcome to the next level!
Limited and numbered to a one-time pressing of 500 copies, the vinyl includes a jacket, printed dust sleeve, and obi strip.

Artist: Heldon
P: 1998
We have here a strange cross of Punk vocals , Techno beats and the usual repetitive minimalism (that R. Pinhas is well known for). Please note the musical help of a few Magma-related musicians such as Wideman and the father-son duo Paganotti, but this is without any effect on the music. Actually , unlike most Heldon albums , the emphasis appears to be in the texts (the huge majority of Heldon in the 70's was instrumental) and they are rather deep , thoughtfull, tortuous and a bit revolutionary. However the revolt of the lyrics (in French for the most part but consequent percentage is also English), this album should only appeal to confirmed Pinhas fans and not really to progheads looking for yet another stunning work such as Heldon had developped in the 70's.
Line-up / Musicians:

- David Korn / vocals
- Antoine Paganotti / drums
- Olivier Manchion / bass guitar
- Norman Spinrad / lyrics and additional vocals
- Maurice G. Dantec / lyrics, analog synthesizers
- Richard Pinhas / guitar metatronic process & electronic
With:
- Alain Ranval / side guitar on "Holy Dolly"
- Duncan Nilsson / side guitar on "Holy Dolly"
- Bernard Paganotti / bass guitar on "Le Plan", "Ubik"
- Benoît Widemann / organ, synths, Minimoog bass
- Alain Bellaïche / side guitar on "Ubik"
- Philippe Laurent / electroloop on "Only Chaos is Real"

Artist: Heldon
P: 1979 / 1993
Stand By (recorded in 1978) has to be hailed as Heldon's signature work. It contains everything that is good about Heldon, all of its musical references and all of its originality. It is Heldon in its mature glory and no other band I can think of so convincingly toed the line between electronic and progressive rock. Progressive rock drums, bass and guitar blend and merge with bass synthesizer pulses and arpeggios; jazz keyboard solos ride overtop jittery electronic sequences; compositions move from dark moody electronic soundscapes to frantic, pulsing rhythms and then transform into improvisational jams or spacey laid-back passages embellished with slithering, smoking guitar solos. If Un Reve Sans Consequence is Heldon at its most experimental and aggressively original, this is Heldon at their most focused and purely stated.Stand By is outstanding document of all that happened in the 1970s.

Artist: Heldon
P: 1976 / 2020
Heldon was always its own beast and by 1976 it was thriving and roaring like never before. More work was being completed in a proper studio, the ex-Beatle's Moog helped strengthen the sound and direction, and Pinhas' rotating cast of collaborators was solidifying into something resembling a regular line-up, with François Auger on drums and Patrick Gauthier on synthesizers. The result was a darker, heavier, and more intense sound. The music opens with the prog-gone-skronk onslaught of Marie Virgine C, sounding rather like Robert Fripp being sliced into bloody chunks in Thurston Moore's basement. Auger is the star of Elephanta, in all its Moog-assisted polyrhythmic glory. On side two, MVC II offers six minutes of sinister dystopian squelch rock. It's followed by Toward The Red Line, an epic piece conceivably serving to connect the dots between Hawkwind's most freeform passages and the Detroit techno innovations of the coming decade. Needless to say, Heldon's influences had been transcended.

Artist: Richard Pinhas
P: 1993
This is a collection of unreleased tracks, Pinhas played between 1983-1991. So we find different styles, mostly electronic, sometimes with a symphonic touch.

Here the last copy!