RICHARD PINHAS

Richard Pinhas is one of Europe's most creative electronic musicians. We examine the man and his music — including an exclusive interview and an anlysis of his latest album 'L'Ethique'.

The Man and his Music

It is often said of prophets that they are never accepted in their own country. Richard Pinhas, that quiet, intense Frenchman, who has produced some of the most interesting electronic music of recent years, is a prime example of that truism.

He has been voted number one electronic musician in Japan and he has a dedicated group of followers world-wide (with such notables as Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Vangelis numbered amongst his friends and admirers) yet the importance of his position in modern music has yet to be realised by his own countrymen. Happily, he is now starting to gain recognition in England.

The basic force behind Pinhas' music is the philosophy from which it stems — and Pinhas is well-grouded in philosophy. He taught at the Sorbonne after receiving his PhD at an early age and he has developed an attitude towards music that goes far beyond the sounds one actually hears to an almost mystical conceptualisation of the meaning behind the sounds.

Man, maintains Pinhas, has no real volitional control over his existence. His mode of being is taken as given and is dictated by the Law of Eternal Recurrence (which has been written about at length by Ouspensky and other mystically minded philosophers). Basically this Law concentrates on the cyclic nature of existence and is extremely fatalistic in emphasis. What man can do, though, is express his own individual existence, through an art form such as music, using his will to focus his perceptions, into a creative point. Music, when approached in this manner, transcends limitations of time and expresses the eternal through a time based medium.

Some may find this a difficult concept to grasp and, admittedly, I am trying to convey a 21 pages doctoral thesis in a few lines which doesn't help matters. But to understand Pinhas' music it is essential to understand the ideas behind it.

This is not ot say that Pinhas' compositions are abstract intellectualisations. They are essentially emotional pieces and a sincere attempt artitistic, non-verbal (and therefore non-intellectual) expression. A serious headphone session with Pinhas' latest album "L'Ethique", which, incidentally, is titled after a work by Spinoza, should make of the above a bit clearer.

Between 1971 and 1973 he stopped making music but after he finished at the Sorbonne he recorded the backing tracks of the first Heldon album. The album was made very cheaply with one AKS, a guitar and two Revoxes and Richard is the first to admit that the sound was bad and the compositions unachieved. But this album opened up a new direction that Pinhas was able to explore subsequently.

Three more Heldon albums followed — all home recordings — and these early albums all display traces of Pinhas affection for the music of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. With Heldon's later albums the more overt aspects of Fripp and Eno's influence diminished as the technology they were working with changed. Now working with Francois Auger (drums and percussion) and Didier Batard (bass) Pinhas was using sixteen and twenty-four track equipment instead of his small home set-up and his music became less personal taking on a hard metal-electronic direction.

There is no new album planned until 1984 but the title is already fixed as "Sein und Zeit: The rise and Fall of Joe Chip". 'Sein und Zeit' is German for 'Being and Time' so Pinhas' interests are certainly consistent. Joe Chip is a Sci-Fi character — Sci fi being another of Pinhas' passions.

Pinhas recently performed "L"Ethique" in its entirety in London at The Venue. The day after the concert Pinhas talked to E&MM and this is what the man had to say...

The Interview

Do you regard the guitar as your main instrument?

Richard: Yes. I compose on the guitar and I always think that I play guitar, I don't play synthetiser. But I don't know how you can play synthetiser, it is not an instrument, it is a machine that creates sounds but it is not an instrument for somebody who can play. I mean you can make the chords or scales on the synthetiser but that doesn't mean anything, it's just a medium to create on because you can get fantastic sounds, fantastic velocity, and you can explore a lot of fieldds. For example, in my system you have sixteen tracks, you have floppy dics, you have a lot of things, and you have a lot of sounds but it is not an instrument.

You are really implying that if you approach a synthetiser you would start making sounds rather than playing sounds

Richard: Yes, of course.

Surely a keyboard player can get over that. If I want to compose on a synthetiser I can ignore that quality

Richard: It's better to compose on a Steinway grand Concert.

Yes, I agree with you on that. I have a piano in the lounge that I still prefer to sit down at and not to be distracted by the interfacing of synthetisers and whatever.

Richard: You can use a synthetiser for playing or composition because you know you can transpose, you can play with the sounds, but you can do this in your mind when you have been palying synthetisers for ten years. I think that I can represent in my head all the sounds that an analogical synthetiser, even one with 20 different voices, can do. After ten years with synthetisers I have started to think like a sound engineer to an extent and have learnt quite a lot about the technical side.

So you consider that a knowledge of the electronic aspects of your instrument is as important as the music

Richard: Yes. I know how to produce any sound using synthetiser and recently my guitar amplifier broke for the first time in 6 years and I repaired it myself, but I'm not an electrician. I know all the component of sounds and I am working theoretically with the nature of sound.

Let me go back to this interesting point — you are implying that you are using guitar as harmonic, melodic and rhythmic instrument, in a traditional sense if you like, but in that initial stage of composing you are not really interested in creating the sound because you already have in your mind a concrete image of what that sound will eventually be, on guitar or synthetiser or whatever. For example, you might eventually put the guitar through a flanger or harmoniser but what you are implying is that you are still basically, in the first instance, only concerned with the melody and the music itself. Then I listen to your music and I have to say that sometimes I have this feeling, not so much on the new album, that it ios very easy for you an I who are using new technology instruments to create new sounds and then to say "this is an effect I like, this is my music for this piece" and one of them begins to lose a sense of classical form or whatever.

Richard: On the first tracks of "L'Ethique", I wanted to get way from the technology. All the albums has been done with big technology, big synthetisers. I am in a position to have everything I need if I want it, and the first track is the best one for me. It has been done with one Minimoog and one guitar and it sounds bigger than all the things we spent a lot of time on. We made all the rythms with the Minimoog by hand — not with a sequencer — and we wanted to try to go to the more simple things. I think we have succeeded on this track to get with one thousand pounds worth of instruments (and I have more than £40, 000 of computers and everything, including Prophet 10, E-Mu system and PPG digital waveform terminal) to produce the best track we can do with the smallest technology — and it sounds like the biggest technology you can imagine.

And all the technology has grown up. i mean that in 74 it was possible to release a record that had been done on a Revox because the standard of the records was very low.It has increased a lot every year, now everybody is recording using digital systems, and the standard of sounds n two years should be higher and higher.

You haven't actually done any digital recording yet?

Richard: Not yet. That's the next LP.

What have been your main influences?

Richard: The main influences are Richard Wagner and Robert Fripp — definitely. I like very much what Robert Fripp is doing and I think there is a straight connection between who I see as the three most important people in the history of modern music: Wagner, Bartok and Robert Fripp. But Fripp is the most imoortant composer. It is important that people realise that what he has done has more importance than any other recent compositions. I can just tell you one thing, that he is developing like an organic rhythm that suggests the pulsation of the earth. You know in physical studies you have something you call the electronic noise, the noise in the Cosmos? Well, he is doing this in music and that is one of the most important things you can do. Wagner developed all the ground mythology and Fripp is developing electronic noise reality. And the second thing is that his music is composed of a block of time, he is not doing musicin the time, he is doing music that is immediately a block of time. That is why he is so important.

So he does obviously give you inspiration?

Richard: A little bit more than inspiration. You know, to understand any music you must devote yourself to listening to it. When I discovered Wagner I listened to each opera thirty times, one after the other, it takes weeks and weeks. When I discovered Stockhausen ten years ago, it was the first record I discovered 'Hymnen' and he takes some real intstrument, big orchestral playing, and he makjes noise on it. I took the record and spent three days and nights just trying to understand what he is saying. And the more you listen, the more you realise that music and life are completely connected. When you are composing you are actually re-composing something that has been working of all your life. I have been working for four years at the Freudian school in Paris and it is true that your unconscious work is more important than your conscious, and your unconscious is working 24 hours a day.

The years 71-73 are reported that you did no music, presumably because you were studying.

Richard: Yes, that is right because I was finishing the PhD, during 72-73.

That can't really be true, because once a musician is always a musician...

Richard: Well, I was making music but it was not the main centre of my life at that time.

And you started out, as most of us do, with an album using little equipment: an AKS and two revowes. How have you built up to your present instrumentation?

I sold my small independent record label to a guy and he gave me a Moog modular system in exchange. Then I got some ARP stuff but I sold all that. I kept the AKS and then I got an Oberheim DS2 sequencer and I made a custom analogue sequencer. Then I got the E-mu system that I used recently at The Venue in London. everything at the gig was controlled by the E-mu system.

You were using an impressive array of equipment at the gig. Pehaps you could describe the set up you were using...

Richard: Well, first of all there was the e-mu modualr system and on top of that I had a French 4 voice RSF synthetiser and the E-mu computer interface. Next to that was my small E-mu — basic VCO Filter VCA —. I also had two custom built Moog modular systems including fixed filter banks for percussion.

You hava a marvellous percussion cymbal sound which, of course, you can only get by very precise filtering...

Richard: Yes. All percussion comes from the modular Moog systems and is triggered by the computer. To the right of all this was my Polymoog and next to that was a digital delay/harmoniser. I use two Teac 8-2 mixers for on stage mixing.

What guitars do you use?

Richard: On stage and for recording I use a 1965 Gibson Stereo and I also play a 1957 Les Paul, but I only use that in the studio. On the last album, 'L'Ethique'. I played through a Roland Guitar synthetiser on Robert Fripp's order! I also have a Travis Bean which I used at The Venue with the Roland Equipment.

How do you regard the role of the two synth players? In actual fact you don't really need them, do you?

Richard: No, I don't need tham but I like the presence of other musicians. They are great. They're not computers but they are very good musicians. They're all on the album and we're very close. Patrcik Gauthier played in Magma for three years and Jean Philippe Goude played with Bernard Paganotti and Patriick Gauthier for a long time.

Are the synth players using sequencers or playing rearranged patterns?

Richard: They don't use sequencers although they do play sequences. But they make moods in the sequences that no computer can do. They change things where they want to and they certainly add their own presence. All the tracks, apart from the solos are completely constructed, but within that construction they are able to add personalities. And Bernard Paganotti's such a complete musician that I couldn't see a live performance of my music working so well without someone of his standard on bass.

You have done solo and band work, which do you think you would like to concentrate on in the future?

Richard: I'd like to continue with a mixture of both. I inttend spending a year and a half until my next album. I don't want to release an album before 1984 and I've some surprises in store for that. I don't want to say much about it yet though.

I'm recording a string quartet playing a piece that I wrote and I may use that for the next album. I'm going to analyse all the string sounds with a real-time analyser and encode them for the PPG digital synthtiser and correct the timbre. I'll take the real timbre of the strings and make one piece with the real timbre and one piece with the real timbre analysed by a synthtiser — a Fairlight or something like this — but with the PPG.

You don't have a Fairlight though...

Richard: No, I've got the PPG. It's better with the PPG because the technology of the PPG is really brand new. The Fairlight is four years old. It's good but the PPG is using higher technology. With the string quartet I'll be using this technology to analyse the sound step by step, taking in all parameters of length, intensity, duration and timbre. This way I will have the original quartet and a synthgetised one that has been taken from the original image.

I am really interested in the whole digital thing. I have a lot to learn because digital synthetisers are still at the beginning stage. Whereas with analogical synthetisr, people like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream or people like me don't have anything left to learn. We are at the end of an analogue era.

But you obviously appreciate the analogue / digital mix of the PPG.

Richard: Even the analogue E-mi. I like it but I don't think it can help me find really new sounds. To give you an idea — at the beginning of the seventies it would take half an hour to find a really new sound.

Now I would take two months because all the sounds have been done by people like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno or Heldon. In the composing process choosing the sounds can take a very long time while choosing the notes can take a comparatively short time. But this isn't a good way to work. You have to do the composition frst and try to find the sounds as a part of the composition.

You have to first get your idea, and when you've got your idea, it's an idea of composition. I insist on this word 'composition' because the composition is not only notes or chords — it is also sounds, textures and density.

Richard: Yes. When I knew the digital-synthetisers were coming I learnt as much as I could about them in adav,ce. They didn't exist yet but I started learning the basics just to be prepared.

Do you think that musicians today should have an awareness of these new developments?

Richard: If they like this aspect, yes. If they don't, I think the answer must be no. the important thing is that the musician understands how to compose his own music and knows how best to express this music — whether electronically or not.

Many electronic groups today don't do anything new or important. They just duplicate and you can't even call this music. The important thing is to do music — electronic or not. The elctronic process comes in symbiosis with the music. You have to be a musician before you can be an elctronic musician.

How would you describe your own music?

Richard: It's elementary Cosmic expression. The same is true fro Wagner, and Robert Fripp, and at a lower level for me.

The focal point of Wagner's music is God, Robert Fripp it is organic pulsation and me..I think this is still something I have to discover. I hope I still have a long way to go. I hope this is only the beginning.