Richard Pinhas – Chronolyse

Inspired by a range of highly estimated cultural characters from Benedict Spinoza to Gilles Deleuze and Michel Jeury, ‘Chronolyse’ by Richard Pinhas remains a seriously underrated, avant-garde masterpiece of minimalistic Sci-Fi electronic music. Produced more than decades ago (1976), it still sounds amazingly contemporary, and will probably continue to remain fresh in the next Century.

Richard reminds the influential concepts behind his LP: “Deleuze and Spinoza really influenced my life, philosophically and musically. We must refer to the immanence and ontology of being - why not ‘musical being’ of Spinoza, the 'Composition Plan (Of Sounds)' of Deleuze; and all their work, their material.
And of course, both concepts - singularity and event, 'The Event Singularity'; then, the notions of time, and repetition. Deleuze worked a lot focused on the idea of 'repetition', mainly on his book 'Difference & Repetition': the repetition that ceases and locks, that delivers and creates... It's not by coincidence that his concept and work was inspirational, in theory and practice, to all musicians that claim to be representatives of the repetitive music. Chronolyse was my 1st LP, done during the year of 1976, same time when Heldon 5's 'Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spatiale' came out. About ‘Chronolyse’ specifically, it was recorded in one single take with a 2-Track Revox A700. The album has a sequence of variations under a single theme, as I said, recorded-in-a-row with a Moog 55 modular Synth. The word 'Chronolyse' came from a romance by Michel Jeury, Sci-Fi French writer.”

About the album's highly influential content, Mr. Pinhas declared: "I know that, for example UNKLE took one of the 'Variations Sur Le Theme des Bene Gesserit' and also that very often people ask me for samples of it, or even don't ask. I don't mind, I'm deeply libertarian, and most of all, "Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre!" (expression created by the French socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui in his Journal, in 1880). “Against the voluntary servitude!” (he exclaims, bringing Etienne de la Boétie’s 1576 legendary political piece ‘Discourse on Voluntary Servitude’ (‘Discours de la servitude volontaire’).
Spinoza and Nietzsche above all - except, of course, the women.”