Album review : RICHARD PINHAS / HELDON – Le Plan and Winter Music

Other Side Music [Release date 02.08.24]

It somehow seems right that “avant garde” is a French language term for something that is aesthetically innovative, especially a “work of art”, which these pieces of music from French musician, Richard Pinhas surely are.

Pinhas’s band, Heldon , known for its Progressive Electronic Rock, dates back to the 70s. A huge gap then to the year 2000, and the release of new album material, Only Chaos Is Real. Another jump cut to now, and the remixed (by Pinhas) 4 track abbreviation, called Le Plan, taken from Only Chaos…. Now released on the US based, Other Side label, along with the 22 minute Winter Music.

This industrial strength, 21st century material is darker than the stuff from the 70s. No surprise there. Times change. Not often for the better.

Musique Concrete, Progressive Electronica, call it what you will, has been the foundation stone of Pinhas’s music since his days studying postmodern philosophy.

His discovery of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk during that time feeds into all of these 4 tracks.

‘Le Plan’, the instrumental title track has the kind of lo-fi, tuneful abandon that we remember from Syd Barret’s solo material. There’s a kinetic energy to the piece’s expansive range of sci-fi sounds.

The shouty urgency of ‘Next Level’ has a lot in common with Thrash surprisingly, a promise of something far more daring than we get.

Pinhas, no doubt nudged by the label, proves he can write accessible, vaguely commercial material with the propulsive third track, ‘Ubik’.

In parallel, Other Side has released Pinhas’s two part ‘Winter Music’, a stripped down, minimalist slice of electronica, exploring the use of repetion, an unused 22 minute offcut from his 1979 album, Iceland. Think “Blade Runner” and Vangelis’s timeless, often bleak score. Doesn’t hit you in the face, but wow, how it gets under your skin.

Pinhas’s aim, no doubt. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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