Trax

LP version. Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple), Richard Pinhas (Heldon), and Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins). What else is there to say? Richard Pinhas is one of the more atypical French musicians of the last 40 years. He has been surprising everyone all these years - Always appearing where you expect him the least. Makoto Kawabata, who has been a big follower of Heldon, has also been a longtime friend and partner of Tatsuya Yoshida. So naturally, these three reunited in 2016 at the Studio Condorcet in Toulouse (France) to record a series of fiery improvisations and experimentations. Free noise, blues, and psychedelia are all intertwined, but there is an uneasiness to it, some anxiety matting the mix. The music is relentlessly broken down: percussive guitars turned bewitching metronome, while other guitars are taken on a sometimes lyrical but always chaotic journey, keeping the listener on edge. Repeat listens will trigger memories of German psychedelia or even the more recent noise rock or no-wave. Every title is named "Trax" followed by a number. The second "Trax" flirts with bands such as Can in their most primary form; that's to say that it's obsessivly repetitive. But the trio is so skillful that they turn influences into subliminal messages. Each "Trax" is a sonic outburst, relentlessly following each other. The musicians expose their most expressive and unbridled sides; it's a free music but without the permanent collapse. Richard Pinhas's guitar is a bit like Sonny Sharrock's, but with some sort of Sonic Youth treatment applied to it, and you still can spot those particular effects reminiscent of the Heldon years.