Also this issue: Soul of Tomasz Poland's top jazz musician gives Philly a whirl. -Nate Chinen Text Messaging Carrie Newcomer throws the book at you. -Mary Armstrong Lou Barlow Is God Isn't it time we crucified him? -Chris Parker Brotherly Love Liv Taylor can still make 'em cry. -Nicole Pensiero Flogging Molly -Frank Lewis Grant Hart -Paul Burress Robert Randolph -Sam Adams The Gossip/Yeah Yeah Yeahs -Patrick Rapa

October 31-November 6, 2002

musicpicks

Richard Pinhas

At the dawn of the '70s -- circa Germany's Ash Ra Tempel or Britain's King Crimson -- Heldon was a musical menace to French electronic/guitarscape aficionados. Terrorizing layers of synthesizers and mad, arching axe-grinding, courtesy of Richard Pinhas, made records like Electronique Guerilla and Stand By dark, disassociative faves. Since disbanding Heldon, Pinhas has forged a mixed bag of delicate, emotive, arid-ambient soundscapes (East-West), clattering suites (Chronolyse) and playful, sequenced musics (L'Ethique). His newest, a genuinely exquisite, experimental work, Event and Repetitions (Cuneiform), continues along armed-assault lines, marking his heavy, liquid loops, fast, slippery samples and dusky drones with cut-and-pasted futurist texts from William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and Hunter S. Thompson. This rare, rare appearance of Pinhas in Philadelphia is worth experiencing a chill for, both outside and in Pinhas' icy, irrepressible sound.

Sat., Nov. 2, 8 p.m., $15, with Jerome Schmidt, St. Mary’s Church, 3916 Locust Walk, 800-965-4827.

—A.D. Amorosi