Customer Reviews

Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale

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Think French electronic music from the 1970s was nothing but sweet, bouncy doodles (as in J.M. Jarre or Tim Blake) or goofy tripped-out New Age utopian fairytales (as in David Allen's Gong)? Think again.

This 1976 release by Heldon represents French electronic music at its frantic, industrial, aggressive height. No other recording--by Heldon or anyone else I am aware of--contains the power, creativity or experimental prowess of this one. At once challenging and compelling, Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale is the most outrageous, unusual and impressively original of their entire discography. Dense with snarling guitar solos--distorted, drifting and haunting, as if you're hearing them from afar, moving frantically through a deserted cityscape--intense percussion rhythms, manic, bubbling synthesizer sequences; this is an assault upon all comfortable conventions, an assault which demands attention and deserves to be paid attention to. In parts it reminds me of the compelling chaos created in the best of Morton Subtonick's late 1960s academic electronic recordings ("Silver Apples of the Moon" or "The Wild Bull") but of course this one's phrased in the vernacular of progressive rock and the rock-born electronic music of 1970s Europe.

But what's the Speciale part? Cuneiform Records published this CD in 1995 and wisely chose to include two bonus tracks, recorded live in 1978 (tracks 3 and 6). Amazingly, these live recordings fit in so well that they are indistinguishable from the studio recordings, in both recording quality and musical content. Frankly, the CD would seem empty without them.

So, whether you're a die-hard Heldon fan already or just someone with a taste for the musically adventurous, this one's a sure win. It predates what later was to be called Industrial rock and in many respects out-angsts even the then-new punk scene. Simultaneously, however, it manages to take an intellectual stance that has been absent in most music since.

There are only a few points to add to Micah Sisk's excellent review of this deserved but unacknowledged gem from 1976. First of all, the title is a French translation of King Crimson's legendary live bootleg. Secondly, Un reve may be the first true marriage between the clinical precision of electronic music and the fiery power of rock. Pinhas' guitar almost literally sounds like a mastadon in heat as it charges its way through a jungle of massive, mechanized percussion (Francois Auger) and violent synthesizers. Un reve is really the first in a long wave of albums that would come later that can be truly classified as "Cold Wave," a legitimate precursor to such industrial bands as Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and Fad Gadget. In some ways, Un reve is Heldon's most important, most influential album (though not necessarily my personal favorite) and as such deserves at least some belated recognition for having gotten there first.