CHRONOLYSE

Richard Pinhas is known as the "French Fripp" for his guitar playing, but his solo albums are generally dominated by synthesizers. The leader of Heldon recorded this album, his first, in 1976 but it was not released until 1978. The song titles refer to the book Dune. The majority of the first half of the album consists of "Variations Sur le Theme de Bene Gesserit" which is diveded into seven different tracks. Basically, these are sequencer pieces with no guitar or drums (unlike Heldon). The most interesting and memorable of the seven tracks is part III with it's hypnotic and rhythmic sequencer patterns.

"Duncan Idaho" fills out the first half and is generally more interesting than the seven previous tracks. It's the most melodic thing on the whole album. The song opens with metallic sequencer sounds similar to Tangerine Dream of the time. Repeated melodies change notes and more rhythmic sequencer patterns join them. You hear a droning, spacey synth sound towards the end. The rest of the album is made up of the 30 minute "Paul Atreides" which sounds more like Heldon due to the presence of drums, bass and Pinhas' guitar.

It begins very spacey and ambient sounding. It starts to get more noisy and trippy as sustained guitar notes first enter after 5 minutes. Becomes less noisy and cymbals start to enter after 7 minutes. Everything is fairly slow paced and laid-back up to this point. You start to hear some Mellotron after 10 minutes as the drummer gets a little more loose in his playing. Double-tracked guitars start to solo away. Before 20 minutes the drums die out. Lots of trippy and sci-fi sounding synth sounds follow.

I much prefer Heldon to Pinhas solo. For some reason I don't like some of the synth tones on his solo albums, whereas I don't have a problem with them on Heldon's albums. The presence of drums and guitar in Heldon also helps. The last two tracks are good but the first seven just sound like sequencer experiments, not anything you would really remember after hearing once. This is a good album just not great, not anything I would want to listen to more than once a year. I'll give this a 3.5 but can't bring myself to give it 4 stars. So 3 stars.