Biography
French guitarist Richard Pinhas directed Heldon between 1974 and 1978, issuing seven albums under that name plus six solo LPs that regularly enlisted other Heldon participants. Born in 1951, he completed a doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne and later lectured there. He entered the heavily electronic outfit Schizo in 1972. Once that band ended, he created Heldon, of which he remained the single permanent figure.
Pinhas explored wide territory across his solo recordings. His debut solo album Rhizosphere relied entirely on synthesizers apart from drums on the extended title piece. Chronolyse moves between basic sequencer compositions and the half-hour Heldon performance “Paul Atreides.” The Iceland LP vividly evokes a remote, icy terrain. East-West stands as his most accessible recording. L’Ethique presents varied material with tighter structures than several earlier works. After withdrawing from music, he resurfaced with DWW in 1992, drawing on material from 1983 to 1991. That release initiated his enduring association with the U.S. label Cuneiform Records, which subsequently hosted most of his output without holding exclusive rights. He issued Cyborg Sally with John Livengood in 1994 and the solo album De l’Un et du Multiple on Spalax in 1996. Closing the decade, he delivered two joint projects: Oblique Sessions II alongside multi-instrumentalist Pascal Comelade and Fossil Culture with composer and keyboardist Peter Frohmader.
In other pursuits, Pinhas began incorporating spoken-word elements in the late 1990s, a technique he had already used with Heldon, featuring texts by twentieth-century thinkers and futurists such as philosopher Gilles Deleuze, science-fiction authors Norman Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, and French novelists Maurice Dantec and Chloé Delaume. The words, captured either on tape or performed live in real time in English and French, supplied additional sonic layers, textures, and conceptual depth to his music. Schizotrope: The Life and Death of Marie Zorn, released in 2000, compiled live recordings from a U.S. tour by Pinhas and Dantec. The writer recited passages from the late Deleuze while the guitarist responded in real time through electronic manipulation, creating a fitting homage to the radical thinker.
The next year Pinhas revived Heldon for the limited-edition album Only Chaos Is Real, which included drummer Antoine Paganotti of Magma, Ulan Bator bassist Olivier Manchion, and vocalist David Korn. He also released the studio album Le Pli: Schizotrope III with Dantec. Event and Repetitions, issued in 2002, was assembled from more than seventy hours of guitar performances that were meticulously edited; it received widespread international praise as one of his strongest recordings. Tranzition appeared in 2004 with Paganotti on drums and Philippe Simon on violin, plus a collaborative track featuring novelist Delaume. Paganotti and the violinist returned for the double-length conceptual album Metatron in 2006, named after an angel in the Judaic mystical Kaballah texts; additional contributors included guitarist Alain Renaud, bassist Didier Batard, and Dantec.
Pinhas encountered Japanese electronic and noise artist Masami Akita, known as Merzbow, during a tour. Their first joint recording, Keio Line, appeared on Stephen Stapleton’s Dirter Productions in 2008. Two years later Merzbow and Wolf Eyes contributed to Metal/Crystal. Two further live collaborations with Merzbow, Rhizome and the retrospective Paris 2008, surfaced in 2011. That same year Pinhas performed with Akita and Wolf Eyes at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, yielding a live album released in 2012. A studio collaboration with Comelade, Flip Side (Of Sophism), also came out that year.
Pinhas unveiled one of his most ambitious works with Desolation Row in 2013. The opening installment of a planned “devolution” trilogy addressing the worldwide impact of neoliberalism and what he termed “teknofascism,” it extended the sonic, political, and social approaches first evident in his involvement with the 1968 student uprisings in Paris. To realize the project he assembled avant-garde musicians Oren Ambarchi, Lasse Marhaug, Etienne Jaumet, Noel Akchote, Eric Borelva, and his son Duncan Nilson-Pinhas. In 2014 he and French guitarist Tamagawa, whose real name is Bertrand Gaude, issued a self-titled limited-edition LP on Mayo Records as the first of three releases that year; the remaining two appeared the same day on Cuneiform. The studio album Welcome in the Void with drummer Tatsuya Yoshida formed the second “devolution” chapter, while Tikkun, a live recording with Oren Ambarchi, featured guest appearances by Merzbow, Duncan Nilson-Pinhas, and Borelva on the second half. The following year Bam Balam released Hakata Shibuya: Live in Japan 2014 with Tatsuya.
The year 2016 proved equally productive. Cuneiform simultaneously issued two contrasting albums: Mu, a structured studio improvisation credited jointly to guitarist Barry Cleveland and featuring bassist Michael Manring and drummer Celso Alberti, and Process and Reality, titled after Alfred North Whitehead’s 1929 philosophical treatise, which placed Pinhas in a trio with Yoshida and Merzbow—their first collective performance. That same year Bam Balam issued the live album Live at Tusk Festival with Yoshida and saxophonist Ono Ryoko.
Pinhas toured the United States throughout the summer and fall. He also recorded his first project for Germany’s Bureau B label. Working with Ambarchi, he laid down the basic tracks in Paris using every instrument, then discarded all but the core parts and sought additional musicians to complete the arrangements. They enlisted drummer Arthur Narcy, bassist Florian Tatar, Merzbow, Duncan Nilson-Pinhas, and percussionist William Winant; Reverse appeared in January 2017. The next year he joined longtime collaborator Tatsuya Yoshida and Acid Mothers Temple’s Makoto Kawabata for Trax, a collection of live in-studio improvisations.
Pinhas explored wide territory across his solo recordings. His debut solo album Rhizosphere relied entirely on synthesizers apart from drums on the extended title piece. Chronolyse moves between basic sequencer compositions and the half-hour Heldon performance “Paul Atreides.” The Iceland LP vividly evokes a remote, icy terrain. East-West stands as his most accessible recording. L’Ethique presents varied material with tighter structures than several earlier works. After withdrawing from music, he resurfaced with DWW in 1992, drawing on material from 1983 to 1991. That release initiated his enduring association with the U.S. label Cuneiform Records, which subsequently hosted most of his output without holding exclusive rights. He issued Cyborg Sally with John Livengood in 1994 and the solo album De l’Un et du Multiple on Spalax in 1996. Closing the decade, he delivered two joint projects: Oblique Sessions II alongside multi-instrumentalist Pascal Comelade and Fossil Culture with composer and keyboardist Peter Frohmader.
In other pursuits, Pinhas began incorporating spoken-word elements in the late 1990s, a technique he had already used with Heldon, featuring texts by twentieth-century thinkers and futurists such as philosopher Gilles Deleuze, science-fiction authors Norman Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, and French novelists Maurice Dantec and Chloé Delaume. The words, captured either on tape or performed live in real time in English and French, supplied additional sonic layers, textures, and conceptual depth to his music. Schizotrope: The Life and Death of Marie Zorn, released in 2000, compiled live recordings from a U.S. tour by Pinhas and Dantec. The writer recited passages from the late Deleuze while the guitarist responded in real time through electronic manipulation, creating a fitting homage to the radical thinker.
The next year Pinhas revived Heldon for the limited-edition album Only Chaos Is Real, which included drummer Antoine Paganotti of Magma, Ulan Bator bassist Olivier Manchion, and vocalist David Korn. He also released the studio album Le Pli: Schizotrope III with Dantec. Event and Repetitions, issued in 2002, was assembled from more than seventy hours of guitar performances that were meticulously edited; it received widespread international praise as one of his strongest recordings. Tranzition appeared in 2004 with Paganotti on drums and Philippe Simon on violin, plus a collaborative track featuring novelist Delaume. Paganotti and the violinist returned for the double-length conceptual album Metatron in 2006, named after an angel in the Judaic mystical Kaballah texts; additional contributors included guitarist Alain Renaud, bassist Didier Batard, and Dantec.
Pinhas encountered Japanese electronic and noise artist Masami Akita, known as Merzbow, during a tour. Their first joint recording, Keio Line, appeared on Stephen Stapleton’s Dirter Productions in 2008. Two years later Merzbow and Wolf Eyes contributed to Metal/Crystal. Two further live collaborations with Merzbow, Rhizome and the retrospective Paris 2008, surfaced in 2011. That same year Pinhas performed with Akita and Wolf Eyes at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, yielding a live album released in 2012. A studio collaboration with Comelade, Flip Side (Of Sophism), also came out that year.
Pinhas unveiled one of his most ambitious works with Desolation Row in 2013. The opening installment of a planned “devolution” trilogy addressing the worldwide impact of neoliberalism and what he termed “teknofascism,” it extended the sonic, political, and social approaches first evident in his involvement with the 1968 student uprisings in Paris. To realize the project he assembled avant-garde musicians Oren Ambarchi, Lasse Marhaug, Etienne Jaumet, Noel Akchote, Eric Borelva, and his son Duncan Nilson-Pinhas. In 2014 he and French guitarist Tamagawa, whose real name is Bertrand Gaude, issued a self-titled limited-edition LP on Mayo Records as the first of three releases that year; the remaining two appeared the same day on Cuneiform. The studio album Welcome in the Void with drummer Tatsuya Yoshida formed the second “devolution” chapter, while Tikkun, a live recording with Oren Ambarchi, featured guest appearances by Merzbow, Duncan Nilson-Pinhas, and Borelva on the second half. The following year Bam Balam released Hakata Shibuya: Live in Japan 2014 with Tatsuya.
The year 2016 proved equally productive. Cuneiform simultaneously issued two contrasting albums: Mu, a structured studio improvisation credited jointly to guitarist Barry Cleveland and featuring bassist Michael Manring and drummer Celso Alberti, and Process and Reality, titled after Alfred North Whitehead’s 1929 philosophical treatise, which placed Pinhas in a trio with Yoshida and Merzbow—their first collective performance. That same year Bam Balam issued the live album Live at Tusk Festival with Yoshida and saxophonist Ono Ryoko.
Pinhas toured the United States throughout the summer and fall. He also recorded his first project for Germany’s Bureau B label. Working with Ambarchi, he laid down the basic tracks in Paris using every instrument, then discarded all but the core parts and sought additional musicians to complete the arrangements. They enlisted drummer Arthur Narcy, bassist Florian Tatar, Merzbow, Duncan Nilson-Pinhas, and percussionist William Winant; Reverse appeared in January 2017. The next year he joined longtime collaborator Tatsuya Yoshida and Acid Mothers Temple’s Makoto Kawabata for Trax, a collection of live in-studio improvisations.
Albums
