Reynold Philipsek in Short Stories from 1980: Highly Recommended!

 

Guitarist Reynold Philipsek who is still playing and recording to this day, was in groups Cure of Ares (1970), Sailor (1972), Willow (1977), Reynold's Remarkable Rhythm Cattle (mid-80s). 

The beautiful US progressive fusion album Sailor, very similar in my mind to Natural Life, was posted here before, and I'll get back to it in our next installment.  OC requested his1978 Theme for an Imaginary Movie, which has proved impossible to find. Not sure if someone would ever be generous enough to share it with us but that would be almost beyond belief.  Most likely it will pop up for sale on discogs one of these years at a few hundred dollars.  From the samples that are available on youtube, it sounds like a true progressive gem, like this one is, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Information on this release here.  Let's start with a very short song called Dover which if you're anything at all like me, will make you fall off your chair or tumble to the ground if you're on a couch:

Can you believe it?

A track called 15 Rue Menilmontant is shockingly similar to those brilliant French prog-fusion guitarists I've exhaustively cataloged in the past on this blog like Christian Escoude, or Claude Barthelemy:

Consider Bretagne, with its absolutely unusual melody again, reminiscent of the great Fred Israel's album, note the incredible synths work from Philipsek (oh how I miss that classic sound):

Equally astonishing is the sheer fact this came out in 1980.  How could he have maintained faith in this highly complex music in that particular year? There isn't even a hint of reggae! or digital drums and jumpy chords.  Just classic prog...

Again, many thanks for (almost) requesting this...