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ARTIST
TITLE
Allez-Teia (Heldon II) (50th Anniversary Edition)
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
BB 281LTD-LP BB 281LTD-LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/1/2025

Limited anniversary edition: hand numbered, limited edition white vinyl, 500 copies available! Sophomore album from the French space rock electro combo Heldon. Here, 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. 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. 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.