(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

The Heldon project can be identified with its creator and leader, Richard Pinhas, who at the time was a twenty-eight-year-old philosophy assistant at the Sorbonne in Paris and an avid fan of science fiction novels (two themes that would recur frequently throughout his career).

The first album, Electronique Guerilla (Urus, 1974), was almost entirely composed and performed by him on synthesizer and guitar. Compared to the contemporary works of the Germans (who at that time monopolized critical and public attention), Pinhas favored a much more aggressive sound, going so far as to favor the guitar as a solo instrument—a novelty in the electronic field. Circulus Vitiosus and Back To Heldon present structures derived from Robert Fripp’s experiments (cyclical synthesizer scales layered over searing guitar solos).

In 1975, two albums were released. Allez Teia (Urus, 1975) continued the trajectory of the first album, on the fringes of “frippertronics,” with guitar solos immersed in a soft electronic carpet. The novelty was the use of a mellotron in the style of King Crimson.

It's Always Rock And Roll (Urus, 1975), on the other hand, was an ambitious double album for which Pinhas collaborated with Gilbert Artman (leader of Urban Sax) and Patrick Gauthier (ex-Magma), focusing on extended compositions that sometimes exceeded the fifteen-minute mark. While the overture of ICS Mechanique hints at a rapprochement with the German “cosmic” school, and Cotes De Cachalot A' La Psylocybine quietly experiments with fusions of electronic cycles and guitar solos, Cocaine Blues already represents a peak of the new phase, with bass parts assigned to two synthesizers on different tempos—one repeating a Mussorgsky-like motif and the other weaving around it (the fluttering of the third serves as the first guitar). While Aurore and Doctor Bloodmoney are long purely electronic excursions, making Pinhas a precursor of the genre but adding no substantial novelty, Zind Destruction takes inspiration from the electric carnage of Chrome to forge a striking “industrial” hard rock, with distorted guitar at the edge of audibility and scattered cacophonies.

Agneta Nilsson (Urus, 1976), dedicated to his Swedish wife and featuring Coco Roussel, emphasized the importance of improvisation. Three of the five tracks are very long and largely built around the leader’s inspiration. The four movements of Perspective essentially summarize the entire history of the group: majestic and symphonic in the first, still tied to King Crimson’s frameworks; frenetic and driving in the third, midway between Morton Subotnick’s dadaist pieces and Robert Fripp’s “frippertronics”; a sweeping twenty-one-minute fourth movement, whose methodical, jackhammer-like progression occasionally recalls Neu, and whose logorrheic guitar deliria sweep through rock repertoire from Hendrix to Hawkwind. It remains perhaps the group’s most experimental album.

Continuing his progression, Pinhas in the same year arrived with Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale (Cobra, 1976) at a kind of precursor to “industrial” music (thanks to Francois Auger’s pounding sequencers and deafening percussion), showcasing the grit of hard rock and the improvisational spirit of jazz, venturing into cosmic music (Toward The Red Line) and tribalism (Elephanta). The eleven minutes of Marie Virginie C and the fifteen minutes of Towards the Red Line experiment with various combinations of these ideas. MVC II, instead, is industrial music driven by metallurgical noise and metronomic beats. Gauthier still refined the electronic parts.

With Interface (Cobra, 1978), Heldon—now reduced to an unusual power trio (Pinhas on guitar, Gauthier on Moog, and Auger on percussion)—completed the fusion of jazzy solos, heavy metal sounds, and torrential tribalism. Aside from occasional tracks (the ten minutes of “frippertronics” in Jet Girl) and compositions by the supporting musicians, the centerpiece is the nineteen-minute suite Interface, whose crescendo is the noisiest and most cacophonous Heldon ever produced. The electronic tornadoes accompanying the leader’s guitar solos find their definitive resolution.

The seventh album, Stand By (Egg, 1979), which also featured Klaus Blasquiz (another ex-Magma member), saw Gauthier’s importance grow, truly unleashed on the Minimoog, just as Auger had been on the previous album’s rhythm section. Stand By (one of their masterpieces) unfolds with deafening, fast heavy metal—wild and futuristic, reminiscent of the best Hawkwind. The monumental Bolero in eight movements, another of their masterpieces, spans a vast territory, from Ravel to Tangerine Dream.

After closing the Heldon chapter, Pinhas embarked on a solo career, which has essentially been a natural continuation of his work with the group.

In 1979, Rhizosphere (Cobra, 1979 – Cuneiform, 1994) and Chronolyse (Cobra, 1979 – Cuneiform, 1991) were released. While the latter (dedicated to Michel Jeury’s novel of the same name and Frank Herbert’s Dune) is divided between a pretentious exercise in live electronics (the seven short Variations sur le Theme de Bene Gesserit) and a mellotron suite that blends early German cosmic music with the hypnotic-psychedelic style of the later Pink Floyd and droning minimalism (the thirty-minute Paul Atreides), the former is one of Pinhas’ liveliest works, featuring real percussion and concise, well-structured compositions. From the driving Rhizosphere Sequent to the bucolic A Piece For Duncan, from the romantic Claire P. to the galactic radiation of Trapeze, Pinhas seems to have suddenly found serenity. Even the title track, the tour de force of the album, unfolds more orderly, with steady rhythm and restrained improvisations. The problem is that these works remain somewhat naive, lacking the existential depth of a Klaus Schulze or the intellectual verve of a Brian Eno.

Then came Iceland (Polydor, 1979), one of his best, and East West (Pulse, 1980). The majestic three-part eponymous suite (particularly the finale of the second part, with tribalism and messianic voices) and the ethereal Greenland from the former album softened and smoothed the tone so much that Pinhas could now appeal even to the New Age audience. The two parts of The Last Kings Of Thule, on the other hand, lie halfway between industrial music and Syd Barrett’s psychedelic watercolors. The CD reissue, Iceland (Spalax, 1991 – Cuneiform, 1992), also includes Wintermusic, a twenty-five-minute “ambient” suite. The slow pulses of these pieces and the desolate, glacial atmospheres they inhabit relate to Heldon as maturity relates to youth.

East West, better orchestrated and produced, is a collection of pieces performed around the world. In 1982, Pinhas also ventured into philosophical poetry with L'Ethique (Pulse, 1982 – Cuneiform, 2011), dedicated to Spinoza, achieving with the four movements of the title track the definitive formulation of his cyclic music.

It would take ten years before Pinhas and Heldon were rediscovered. In the meantime, Pinhas had returned to philosophy and had written a book on Nietzsche.

It wasn’t until 1992 that a new album was released, D.W.W. (Cuneiform, 1992), containing music recorded with Jean-Philippe Goude and his longtime collaborator Gauthier between 1983 and 1991. Ubik continues the melodic and restrained style of Ethique and Iceland, reinforced by a more prominent rhythm section, but the four-movement string quartet The Joe Chip Song (inspired by the same Philip K. Dick novel) represents an effort to compose an electronic chamber ballad.

All in all, in his solo career Pinhas has yet to replicate the achievements of Heldon; in fact, he has still not managed to fully define his artistic identity, oscillating between that of an avant-garde amateur and an aspiring New Age musician.