HELDON

• Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, limited edition white vinyl, 500 copies available!
• Sophomore album from the French space rock electro combo (1975)
• Here, Heldon mastermind Richard Pinhas has formed a duo with Georges Grunblatt
• The music: an interplay of feather-light acoustic guitars, Mellotron textures, fuzzy sounds and heavy, spherical synthesizers

Before making his own music in the early 70s, Richard Pinhas was a King Crimson fan. By now the British group has buzzed in Pinhas’ mind for decades, but their greatest impact came early, from something he couldn’t even identify immediately. 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 intermission music was their work,” Pinhas said. “I didn’t know that when I first heard it, but I was very impressed by it. It was the most important influence on Heldon.”
That influence is clear on the second Heldon album, “Allez-Teia”, originally released in 1975 on Pinhas’s own Disjuncta label. The opening song, a soaring mix of string-like electronics and smeared guitar, is called “In the Wake of King Fripp,” a reference both to the guitarist and King Crimson’s second album “In the Wake of Poseidon”. The meditative “Omar Diop Blondin,” in which free tones float above a repetitive guitar figure, is dedicated to Fripp and Eno. (Strong influence also comes from The Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt, who was slated to record some tracks with Pinhas for “Allez-Teia” until the expense of his travel from London to Paris proved prohibitive. Yet “Allez-Teia” — whose title is a nod to “aletheia,” the ancient Greek term for philosophical truth — is hardly a tribute album. The pieces Pinhas crafts with partner Georges Grunblatt —
both playing guitar, Mellotron, and ARP synths — are beatific on the surface but infused with undercurrents of tension.
Over four decades after he made “Allez-Teia”, Pinhas’s admiration for King Crimson remains profound. He actually met Fripp in 1974, and the two still stay in touch. “We have a great friendship; he has been very helpful,” says Pinhas. “Fripp has always been my Hendrix.”
Some artists might balk at admitting such strong influence over their own work, but for Pinhas it’s all about respect. “In the academic world in France, you list your sources,” says Pinhas, who received a Ph.D in philosophy before launching his music career. “So I thought it was good to say, ‚Yes, we are influenced by this, and we are proud of it, and people have to know it.’ The work of King Crimson at that time was very important. It’s not a secret.”

• Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, limited edition light blue double vinyl, 500 copies available!
• 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.