Heldon
Heldon is a French electronic rock band created in 1974. The name of the band was taken from the 1972 novel The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. Like its predecessor Schizo, it is above all the group of guitarist Richard Pinhas who released a large number of albums under his own name. He has worked with numerous collaborators among which musicians of the band Magma as well as philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze (of whom he was a student). Influenced by the work of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, the music of Richard Pinhas and Heldon is sui generis and innovative and has in its turn greatly influenced the field of electronic rock.
Heldon is a French electronic rock band created in 1974. The name of the band was taken from the 1972 novel The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. Like its predecessor Schizo, it is above all the group of guitarist Richard Pinhas who released a large number of albums under his own name. He has worked with numerous collaborators among which musicians of the band Magma as well as philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze (of whom he was a student). Influenced by the work of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, the music of Richard Pinhas and Heldon is sui generis and innovative and has in its turn greatly influenced the field of electronic rock.
Members: Richard Pinhas
Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 stock* Heldon's 5th album, recorded in 1976. Featuring Auger (drums), Gauthier (Mini Moog, Moog bass), Didier Batard (bass), plus Janick Top on one track, this is a crushingly dense synthesis of loud sounds. Magma-styled intensity meeting the "apex of the punk electronic sound" -- a masterpiece.
Stand By
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 stock* "Stand By" was Heldon's final 1970s album. Afterward, Richard Pinhas focused on solo work and took a decade-long break. He explains that the band split due to members' time constraints and a trend of bands breaking up while still successful. The album features urgent synthesizer sounds, intricate drums, and dynamic guitar riffs. Though compared to krautrock, Pinhas was no…
Cyborg Sally
« Cyborg Sally », inspired by Norman Spinrad’s novel « rock machine », marked the return of french pioneering electronic guru Richard Pinhas (Heldon) at the forefront of the french underground scene in 1994. This impressive work, the result of a two year collaboration with John Livengood (Red Noise / Spacecraft), achieves new summits of sophistication and maturity in the fields of electronic music. First time vinyl edition under licence from Richard Pinhas.
Allez-Teia (Heldon II)
*2023 stock* Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's second album Allez-Teia, originally released on Disjuncta in 1975. Before making his own music in the early '70s, Richard Pinhas was a King Crimson fan. The British group has buzzed in Pinhas's mind for decades, but their greatest impact came early. When he first saw them play, Pinhas was struck by music played during intermission. "When I saw (King Crimson guitarist) Robert Fripp and Brian Eno perform in Paris later, I realized that the interm…
The Tears of Nietszche
Following their recent Difference and Repetition, A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze 2LP/CD this limited 7'' edition features The Tears of Nietszche on side A with Richard Pinhas as guest musician and Vecteur d'abolition on side B with the voice of Gilles Deleuze. Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of …
Alturas
When Acid Mothers Temple and Richard Pinhas visited Lima for the first time, in November 2017, to participate in the experimental music festival "Integraciones", Luis Alvarado, the director of Buh Records and curator of the festival, summoned the Japanese and the French musicians to Manongo Mujica's studio and invited Juan Luis Pereira (El Polen) to join them for a recording session. The result was this album which finally comes to light, and where a variety of instruments and sensibilities are …
Hakata Shibuya - Live In Japan 2014
Collaboration between Richard Pinhas and Tatsuya Yoshida. Richard Pinhas, founder of '70s legends Heldon, is one of France's best known experimental musicians. He is a key figure in development of rock music processing with electronic music. Yoshida Tatsuya is one of the most important musicians of the Japanese experimental music scene, spearheading at least a half dozen of that country's most important groups, including Ruins, Sax Ruins, Koenji Hyakkei, and Korekyojinn.
Recorded live at several…
6 - Interface
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's 6 - Interface, originally released in 1977. A brilliant moment occurs right at the end of Heldon's sixth album, 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 19 minutes of highly futuristic avant-garde space rock, this ultramodern music …
Iceland
Originally released in 1979, Iceland is Richard Pinhas' third solo album and his first following the breakup of Heldon. While moving away from the maximalism of his old band, paring down Heldon's hybrid of otherworldly sci-fi imagery and pummeling psych-prog riffs, the journey through Iceland is decidedly more inward. Consisting of longer, brooding synth-based pieces as well as short proto-industrial études and interstitial sketches, Iceland features Pinhas' delay-ridden electric guitar, pulsat…
Rhizosphere/Live, Paris 1982
Rhizosphere, originally released in 1976, was Pinhas' first solo album. It consists of four solo pieces for synthesizer, plus a extended fifth synthesizer piece which is a duet with Heldon drummer Francois Auguer. I have always found it to be a mesmerizing work, on par with its influences of Terry Riley and Philip Glass, but completely different from them due to the usage of only Moog and ARP synthesizers. For this CD release, an additional 38' was added of a previously unheard, professio…
DWW
Recorded between 1983 and 1991, DWW contains some of the finest material devised by the former Heldon leader since that band's "demise." All that is Pinhas is here in its glory: guitars soldered with "Terminator" steel, coruscating electronics, and sequencers that tear electrons from their molecular womb. This is a music that uses King Crimson circa 1974 as its template and couches its aural metaphors in a tapestry of post-Philip K. Dick mind blasts and William Gibson-fused cyberpunk. In fact, D…