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Having completed a new double CD with Merzbow– which will be released in September 2008 on Cuneiform and completing tours of the U.S. and Japan, Richard Pinhas, "Father of French Electronic Music", sets his sights on performing in Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, and France.
Ceaselessly innovative in a career spanning more than 30 years, Richard Pinhas is recognized as one of France's major experimental musicians. A composer, world-class guitarist and electronics innovator, he is a key figure in the international development of electronic rock music. His band Heldon fused electronics, “diabolical guitar work” and rock to create a pioneering, aggressive music that was a precursor to industrial music and techno. Throughout his career, Pinhas has created music that is both visceral and visionary: aggressive, emotional and seductively hypnotic, his music intertwines philosophical, literary and musical theories at its core. Pinhas' work over the past decade, featuring his “Metatronic” system of electronically treated solo guitar compositions, is as radically innovative as anything in his early career. Comparable to the work of Fripp, Eno and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Pinhas' new guitar / electronics / spoken word works shine on his last album, Metatron, a landmark work in his career, where music, meaning, word, sound and process find full unity.
Pinhas has released approximately 20 solo and Heldon CDs, most of them released by or reissued on Cuneiform. Over the past decade, working solo and with other artists such as Pascal Comelade and Maurice Dantec (for Schizotrope), Pinhas has been developing a system of electronic processing to use in performing live solo guitar concerts. His recent music is an arresting sensory assault, a dense river of sound that is rich in detail and texture. Critics are calling Pinhas' newest work his most mature and perhaps best solo guitar work to date.
2008 European Tour Dates:
On this tour, Pinhas will be playing solo and also be accompamied by Jérôme Schmidt (laptop), Antoine Paganotti (drums) and Pascal Comelade on certain shows.
Jérôme Schmidt has been consistently collaborating and performing with Pinhas since the 90's and has been on Richard Pinhas albums since then. Antoine Paganotti, besides being in the group MAGMA, has also been a collabrotor on Pinhas records and shows.
August 3: BERLIN, GERMANY - Pfefferberg Concert Place
with Jérôme Schmidt (laptop)
August 13/14: CARDIFF, UK - Deleuze Symposium: Pinhas will lecture on DELEUZE & MUSIC
and about the WEBDELEUZE Studies.
September 12: BRUXELLES, BELGIUM - Récyclart/Bruxelles
with Jérôme Schmidt (laptop) and Antoine Paganotti (drums)
November 1: GOTEBORG, SWEDEN - University
November 15: PARIS, FRANCE - Maisons des Métallos
with Jérôme Schmidt (laptop), Antoine Paganotti (drums) & Pascal Comelade.
[2009: USA+Canada Tour]
Pinhas' current live performances fuse electronic music with guitar, drums, samples, and visual/video projections. The tour will include Richard Pinhas on guitar & loops and acccompanied by Antoine Paganoti on drums, and Jerome Schmidt on computers & samples on several dates. These spellbinding live performances should interest festivals, organizations, magazines, radio stations and/or venues that are interested in rock, electronic, experimental, avant progressive, industrial and ambient music; as well as those interested in new/digital media, science fiction, philosophy, and/or French culture.
Visit our TOURS page for more information in the coming weeks about this tour.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
If you are interested in booking Pinhas, or know of concert bookers, arts organizations, radio stations, upcoming music festival or venues who would be interested in helping to book a show, please contact Jérôme Schmidt at: jerome@inculte.fr or Richard Pinhas at: richard.pinhas@gmail.com
For more information on Pinhas's muisc or to book a phone/email interview(either in English or French) please contact Joyce (Cuneiform) at joyce@cuneiformrecords.com.
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Richard Pinhas & Merzbow "Keio Line"
This fall, look out for Pinhas' new album which is a partnership with noise music legend, Merzbow. This CD, Keio Line, will be available this September on Cuneiform!
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Richard Pinhas "Metatron"
 
Richard Pinhas' Metatron is over 2 hours on two CDs of spacey and flowing music that doesn't hesitate to also rock out. Pinhas uses a broader range of instrumentation with contributions from Didier Batard (splendid bass), Patrick Gauthier (minimoog), Chuck Oken Jr. (of Djam Karet, on synth), Antoine Paganotti (of Magma, on drums,) Alain Renaud (lead guitar), Jerome Schmidt (laptop and loops) and Philippe Simon (violin) and spoken work contributions by William S. Burroughs, Maurice Dantec, Philip K. Dick, and others. In addition to the music, there is a QuickTime video shot by Alain Bellaiche with footage from Richard and Jerome's 2004 North American tour.
"...Pinhas proves that he is still active, and vital to the future of electronic music... I only hope that the current crop of electronic musicians are listening to this. As artists like Moby have shown, the movement benefits creatively and commercially when the electronics are secondary to the emotions... Pinhas revels in yet another method of achieving this balance, and musicians and fans alike will do well to pay attention." - Splendid
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Pinhas Notes:
Richard Pinhas toured Japan (plus any extra show in Tokyo afterwards) to promote Metatron as well as a limited edition, Japanese-only release of a boxed CD set of his Heldon music. (Released by Captain Trip/licensed by Cuneiform, the Heldon box included a small plastic figurine: the robotic head depicted on the cover of the Heldon album Interface.) To view a live video of one of his Japanese shows and slideshows of various Japanese concerts, please visit these websites:
Video from Japanese Tour
Japanese Tour Slideshow
After the Japanese tour, Richard Pinhas embarked on his first tour of the United State's West Coast, which brought him to the 2007 Montreal Jazz Fest, the most acclaimed festival of jazz and new music on the western hemisphere. He ended the tour with stops in Detroit, Michigan and Cuneiform's hometown of Washington, DC
Pinhas was able to play in front of crowds of long time fans and young people interested in electronic experiental music eager to hear his music for the first time in person. The tour included vistis to these cities:
- Claremont, California
- Santa Monica, California
- Denver, Colorado
- San Francisco, California
- Oakland, California
- Portland, Oregon
- Seattle, Washington
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Detroit, Michigan
- Washington, DC
For those who want to explore beneath the sonic surface, his music is infused with philosophical (A student and life-long friend of Gilles Deleuze, Pinhas currently runs the French philospher's website, which you can visit at www.webdeleuze.com), sci-fi, and avant literary concepts exposed by both French and American authors.
An innovator in the development of industrial music and the fusion of electronics and guitar, Pinhas still continues to inspire and evolve with each album, continually presenting new conceptions of music, philosophy, technology, new media and sound. One new listener to Pinhas, a young university student who loves science fiction novels, commented, "with each song, or movement, or album that I listened to I painted a futuristic landscape with the music permeating throughout." Pinhas' music holds great attraction for young listeners familiar with such bands as God Speed you Black emperor and Sigur Ros, as well as older fans of Brian Eno, King Crimson and Robert Fripp.
Quotes from the press:
"We take it for granted today, but not too long ago, integrating electronics into a rock setting was something exotic and strange... Heldon and Richard Pinhas are considered building blocks for whole schools of experimental rock music, and one of the few who rarely fail to deliver on the hype." - Pitchfork Media
"Organic looping generates mesmerizing counter-patterns and muddling harmonic shifts that causes listeners to remain in a standstill for long minutes, only to be rattled by techno-like structures acting as foundation for transcendental journeys through the mind, the whole enhanced by illustrious voices (Burroughs, Dick, Dantec to name three) appearing every once in a while amidst this hell of parallel convergences. Again, it's that very special kind of inner resonance that this man is able to put at work with a few concepts... and after a couple of hits of the "play" button, Metatron becomes almost indispensable" - Touching Extremes
"Richard Pinhas demonstrates that he is capable of constructing some of the most formidable but exhilharating sonic edifices ever heard by mortal ears." - Bill Tilland/All Music Guide
"Pinhas continues to be one of the last true innovators from the first progressive era." - Expose
"Metatron is music that constantly stretches the imagination and challenges the boundaries of convention." - All About Jazz
"Pinhas carries a large amount of conceptual undertow into his music. He is fascinated with the way music can refine and challenge our conventional perception of time; so much of his music works with the speeding up and slowing down of repetitive tonal patterns, or their slight variation." - Stride |
