Music from France

LP album, glossy cover, numbered and pressed on red vinyl. "Realites Servomecaniques" is an improved version faithful to the original recordings with visuals specially reworked, answering to a categorical assertion, theoricaly and practicaly on Vivenza's bruitist point of view, who presents sounds, « noises », under their rawest and genuine aspect: sounds are machines / machines are sounds. Thus Vivenza captured the essence of factories with a strong sense of austerity, radicality, verticality, …

Aramesh is the latest collaborative work between Pacific 231 & Vox Populi! A synthesis of East meets West colliding with the most experimental sounds & collages. Building-up stacks of multi-directional creations using the latest Binaural Technology to immerse the listener totally within.

LP album, numbered and stamped vinyl limited edition of 250 copies. The first is the pioneer of noise, experimental, industrial music, the other would rather be a sonorous underrated, surreal, sonic alchemist. Their music Dreamcatcher and Les 24 coups au vif are sparkling water works to get drunk. Pacific 231 created a dark aquatic atmosphere whereas Lieutenant Caramel tries to introduce some zing, pops and flings in the bubbles. Reflexive and mental, 'Just digging the crazy art' is the launch o…

Last things and Christian visions: György Kurtág's reflections on Heinrich Schütz, and Olivier Messiaen in search of the "Amen."

idiosyncratic French musical provocateur's finest moments and laden with ace contributions from an international cast of oddballs including Pierre Bastien and Clive Bell, the provisional constructs Berrocal and co. jerry-rig around the free floating music signifiers that comprise Berrocal's aesthetic M.O. are slippery, beautiful things, riding across the seams of art song, meditative orientalia, drunken free jazz bleat, dark electropop, hazy jazz reverbed into Hassell-esque fourth-worldisms and …

Reissue of a magnificent, impossible-to-categorize French classic originally released on the hopelessly obscure d'Avantage label in 1976. Pretty much the definition of musical anarchy, "Paralleles" begins with an atonal duo for trombones, wends its was through accompanied poetry readings and cornet solos, vamps into a rap delivered by Vince Taylor (France's answer to Eddie Cochran and Bowie's inspiration for Ziggy Stardust!) on 'Rock N Roll Station' (which Nurse With Wound deconstructed later on…

Few copies back in stock, long out of print. After the publication of Danses organiques, Elica is pleased to present two previously unreleased compositions by Luc Ferrari from the early 80's: the stereo magnetic tape piece Dialogue ordinaire avec la machine coupled with Sexolidad, a composition for fifteen instruments. Both pieces share with the Danses a deep sense of sexual curiosity, a penetrating matter for the composer's musical explorations. This album is yet another fine testament to the F…

Originating from the 1960s’ French jazz scene, Jacques Thollot left a string of unclassifiable recordings ranging from free neo-expressionist explorations for keyboard and percussion to ornate, carefully arranged baroque jazz. But Thollot’s imagination was too rich to enclose him within jazz idiom. His instrumentals, proportional and highly inventive, are often fragile and elusive. His rich arrangements were as lofty as they were airy. Formally impeccable, they were never academic.Were it not fo…

Solo album of Richard Pinhas (Heldon), recorded at his home studio in Paris in 1993. Drone electronics sound with Metatronic Loop system.

Richard Pinhas is internationally recognized as one of France's major experimental musicians: the "father" of French electronic music. He was the founder of Heldon, a band whose violent fusion of electronics and guitar in the '70s rivaled the German electronic school. As a guitar player he has been compared to Robert Fripp. Cited as an influence by many electronic musicians, Richard Pinhas has helped to define the Spacemusic genre. Since founding the seminal spacerock band Heldon in 1974, Pinhas…

Richard Pinhas has been at the forefront of new rock music in France since the early 1970s, when he founded the band Heldon. Heldon was one of the first bands to meld rock music and electronics, releasing a number of 'classic' albums during the 1970s. He has long been recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of electronic rock music. His stature in France is roughly analogous to that of Tangerine Dream in Germany: the father figure of an entire musical movement. Iceland was Richard's th…

East/West was Richard's fourth solo album, which was originally released in 1980. This album has Richard embracing the new, computer-driven electronic technology, while still using some of his old gear and is one of Richard's personal favorites of his '70s and '80s work.

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…

2007 repress of the 2nd Pinhas solo album, originally released in France in 1978. Performed by: Didier Batard (bass) François Auger (drums, percussion), Richard Pinhas (guitar, synthesizer, mellotron). Composer, guitarist & electronics innovator Richard Pinhas is recognized as one of France's major experimental musicians & is a pivotal figure in the development of electronic rock. This was his 2nd solo and is absolutely one of his very finest works: half live Moog electronics that make fantastic…

"Rhizosphere" is Pinhas' first solo album from 1977 and it's all electronics (Moog 55 and ARP 2600 synthis to he exact), with a guest appearance by Francois Auger on drums on the title track. These intricate compositions are comprised of hyperactive pulsings and subterranean machinery--truly awesome work. The title track is one of electronic music's alltime classic pieces.

COMME A LA RADIO features vocalist Brigitte Fontaine backed by The Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Import reissue of 1971 album for the French vanguard pop chanteuse & The Art Ensemble Of Chicago. Here, the Art Ensemble provide the perfect mysterious ethereal backdrop for her vocal explorations. With strangely charted arrangements & mixing, the ten tracks here defy any & all conventions & result in the most provocative popular recording of 1971. The entire album runs all over the stylistic map while no…

Ultra limited release: "Danse" was part of a sound/visual installation called "Labyrinthe de violence".  Previously unpublished, this radical experimental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for “Œuvres sonores 2”, a 2-day-event organised by Emanuele Carcano at Beaubourg on April 5th & 6th, 2009. "Labyrinthe de violence" was an installation for tape sounds and 2 slide projectors conceived in …

'Accident de chasse', 'I'm... I come... I was...', 'Schiluuk', 'Stable', 'Electrocoagulation tapes', 'Les victimes sont dangereuses', 'Moll', 'Lost in karrack', 'Early tracks', 'Live with or without audience', 'In death we trust!' (extract), 'Program T.4' (extract), 'Drug' (revised), 'The prehistoric tapes'. The best way to enter into the world of brume aka Christian Renou, French composer of musique concrete.

As with the preceding album Rêve Sans Conséquance Spéciale, if you come to grip[ with this wild experimental minimalistic music , you will find yourself riveted to your seat by the sheer power and violent intensity of the music developped by Richard Pinhas (the sole leader of this project). It really depends on how your mind (and mood) is set to understand what is developped here but Can is not far away and Fripp/Eno collaborations are also in the sonic neighborhood. Pinhas 's guitar is deeply i…

This is a reissue of the seventh and final album by this quintessential progressive French electronic rock band. Originally released on Egg in 1979, this features the classic Heldon line-up of Richard Pinhas-guitar and electronics, Patric Gauthier-Moog synthesizer and electronics, Didier Batard-bass, François Auger-drums and guests, including Klaus Blasquiz of Magma. This was one of Heldon's heaviest rock albums.