ÉLECTRONIQUE GUÉRILLA

A convincing experimental debut from the french experimental band. HELDON's style mixes trippy electronic textures with fripp-ian guitar playing. Contrary to most of contemporary musicians of the genre during the 70s', HELDON's music is not light, but rather dark and frightening. Some tracks are guitars dominated, while others are played only synthetizers. The result is pretty innovative and truely enjoyable.

The album opens with "Zind", which directly sets the atmosphere up with smooth electronic distortions to introduce the highlight of the record, "Back to Heldon". This track is really groundbreaking for its time and will transport you to another galaxy. Superposed waves of keyboards with floating guitar solos are epic and reminds by moments the end of PINK FLOYD's "Welcome to the Machine" (which will be recorded one year later!). The second part of the song is much more experimental, in the vein of KRAFTWERK's "Radio-Activity". Unique and mindblowing! "Northernland Lady" arrives as a quite ambient relaxing track with surprising sounds. The next track, "Ouais Marchais mieux qu'en 68", (Georges Marchais was a french politician) is rather guitar dominated and features the politician talking over a slow psychedelic riff. Strange... There comes "Circulus Vitiosus", the little brother of "Back to Heldon". Similar in spirit and sonorities to his brother, the tune is the most tortured track of the disc. It ends with "Ballade pour Puig Antich", featuring a small guitar theme over vaporous synthetizers effects.

"Electronic Guerilla" is one of the best albums from HELDON. With their first record, the band clearly establish themselves as true innovative musicians, differing completely from other musical directions that were taken by other electronic acts and in advance of their time. Strongly recommended to spacey and adventurous music explorers!