Limited anniversary edition: hand numbered, limited edition light blue double vinyl, 500 copies available! Third album from the French spacerock electro combo masterminded by Richard Pinhas. Heldon’s darkest work lays another stone in their sonic mosaic: synths, drones, fuzz and trippy improvisations. There’s something wicked happening on Heldon’s third album It’s Always Rock and Roll. Richard Pinhas’ essential attack of searing guitar and space-bound synthesizer didn’t change radically after the first two Heldon albums, 1974’s Electronique Guerilla and 1975’s Allez-Teia. But there’s dark energy coursing through this double album, a chilly aura that makes even the quietest pieces shiver with tension. The darkness of It’s Always Rock and Roll is more about exploring what’s hidden and overturning convention — about diving beneath bright surfaces to find something more mysterious. If It’s Always Rock and Roll stands up in Heldon’s catalog, perhaps it’s due to expansion — both in the sense of big ideas and lengthy durations. Most tracks last over seven minutes, and two are side-covering epics. “I think the length of a track is part of the creation of the track,” says Pinhas. “There are imperatives. You can do something very complex with a lot of events in four minutes, and then some other things need to be done very slowly. You have to do the length that it demands.” Like the Heldon albums that precede it, It’s Always Rock and Roll is undoubtedly Pinhas’ baby. But its depth-probing sounds earned it a godfather, too.