Heldon - Allez-Teia (Heldon II) (50th Anniversary Edition)

The sophomore album from the French space rock electro combo. Here, Heldon 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. 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. (Strong influence also comes from The Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt, who was slated to record some tracks with Pinhas for “Allez-Teia” until the expense of his travel from London to Paris proved prohibitive. Yet “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.