Profile: Richard Pinhas
Richard Pinhas 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 has released over 15 albums, had involvement in dozens more and shaped the way we listen to music today.

At one time a professor of philosophy at The Sorbonne, Pinhas left academia to found Heldon and pursue music full-on. Influenced by the political climate, science fiction literature and the ambient music of Fripp & Eno, Pinhas' music is "specifically emotional yet tinged with theory. He has developed an attitude towards music that goes far beyond the sounds one actually hears to an almost mystical conceptualization of the meaning behind the sounds."

Over the past 25 years, Pinhas' musical career has taken him over much sonic terrain. From the raw synthesis of the first Heldon album Electronic Guerrilla, followed by the Fripp influenced Allez Teia, the high energy of It's Always Rock 'n Roll, the dark density of Agenta Nilsson, to the deep ambience of his solo release Iceland, in his lifetime Richard Pinhas has traversed genres and established a few of his own.

In March of 1999, Richard Pinhas made a brief concert tour of a few select cities in the USA. We here in the Philadelphia area were extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to witness this eminent musician perform live at the Gathering on 19 March. Using processed electric guitar and joined by French cyberpunk novelist Maurice Dantec, Pinhas created textural soundscapes as a backdrop for Dantec's readings.

As part of this autumn's tour on North America, Richard Pinhas returned to Philadelphia on 2 November 2002. Pinhas performed on electric guitar and was joined by Jerome Schmidt on laptop computer. This tour marks the release of the duo's new album Event and Repetitions (Cuneiform). For details on the concert, please access: http://www.thegatherings.org

RICHARD PINHAS (The Richard Pinhas & Maurice Dantec Schizospheric Experience):
Schizotrope Sub Rosa SR 169 (Belgium) CD

While Pinhas plays tronics on his distorted and electronified guitar, Dantec speaks or screams through macintoshes, reading unpublished Deleuze texts. It's to be filed in the compartment of minimal electronic avant-garde music.

Richard Pinhas
This is his 18th album with Heldon or under his own name! Heldon has become a real legend (from 1972 till now..). Father of an ambient form of electronic music in France, radical guitarist and pioneer of so many aspects - while at the same time, during all those years, a close collaborator and friend of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

Maurice Dantec
Now a full time writer, he has published hard-boiled/techno-punk novels in the very famous French edition Gallimard - La Serie Noire. His first novel, "La Sirene Rouge" (1993), and his second novel, "Les Racines Du Mal" (1995), are considered two very important books between the cyberpunk of Gibson and the new Science-Fiction of Ballard, Dick or Spinrad.

Deleuze & Spinrad
Unpublished texts and voices by the greatest French philosopher and one of the most important sci-fi writers can be heard on this album accompanied by Frippesque soundscapes performed by Richard Pinhas.

--David Hodgson, Playing By Ear 03.28.99

RICHARD PINHAS (The Richard Pinhas & Maurice Dantec Schizospheric Experience):
Schizotrope Sub Rosa SR 169 (Belgium) CD

In 1999, Richard Pinhas collaborated with French cyber-punk novelist Maurice Dantec on the Schizotrope project, which honored philosopher Gilled Deleuze, a friend of Pinhas' who died in 1995. The duo toured the U.S. with this tribute, which incorporated Dantec's readings of Deleuze's works with Pinhas' guitar playing and real-time electronic sound manipulation. From the tapes of these performances comes Schizotrope: The Life and Death of Marie Zorn, a collection of some of the tour's finest moments. The album's generally hushed, devotional atmosphere blends musical experimentation with genuine emotion, resulting in a hypnotic, quietly gripping listening experience. -- Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Related Links:

Artists