Back with Sisyphos and Raw Fish, 1990

 

I mentioned this one as interesting on the basis it straddles the border between their earlier hard rock style and their later prog rock style featured in Moments. And indeed it's kind of half half.

A lovely prog instrumental called Dinosaur:

It's disappointing that they close the album with two improvisations rather than original compositions or songs, as if they ran out of material.  But it's OK, there's enough interesting stuff here and there despite.

Interestingly, there is a new rip of the famed Rhea Sad Sorceress now with a great sound, which doesn't necessarily in my opinion help the music much, compared to the old rip I posted back in 2017. 

The new rip is in comments here.

"Sisyphos" in 7 Pines - Exit from 2011, Masterpiece Alert

 

This album is a bona fide progressive rock masterpiece--from beginning to end. It's not often we encounter this kind of gemlike genius these days, we are not back in the days of napster when people were rediscovering the brilliant Italian one-offs from the past, like Blocco Mentale, or Alphataurus.

It's important to note this is the band of Peter Scheidegger, as you can see here, from Sisyphos. Interestingly, he did do other work which I am curious to know more about. Perhaps to purchase for later. I notice he also did some classical music.

What goes into the mix for prog? By now we all know, the unusual rhythms and chords, the dissonances incl. minor seconds, tritones, the different instrumentations (mellotron is feat. throughout here) but always on that essential rock basis with electric guitars, keys, hopefully mellotrons! etc. all mixed together into something that has to be original and creative-- this is where in my opinion a band like Marillion or Anglagard fails (apologies to their fans), because there is not a lot of original thought. And obviously when all has been said & done in the past, how can you come up with original chord changes never before considered?  Well it's hard but not it's impossible, I mean this record is proof of that, and I believe there is an infinity of those changes possible just as there's an infinity of melodies possible, and I think this can be proven mathematically given the number of combinatorials we're dealing with here, when you combine chords, melodies, and rhythms, three different independent dimensions to explore and multiply.

It's amazing because I just randomly post any of the tracks from this and you'd be impressed by the ideas, the creativity, the wonderful hard-dissonant sounds. I just wish there was more music made like this. The opening instrumental called Fab 7 pulls out the old mellotron and for sure, serves at the perfect introduction to this work:

Even more insane is the 'melody' of the 'song' called The Ones: here and there on this blog we've heard melodies as demented as this one but it's a pretty rare occurrence, this is really just out there, completely bizarre but amazingly it works:

I mean, think of the usual radio station you are forced to listen to at work. Now imagine the 'powers that be' on that station decide just for once to play that song between "Let It Be" and "Everybody Dance Now".

Probably they'd all get fired like Tucker was.

Sisyphos and Retromania in 2009

Oh my god! (omg if you're younger than 40) can that be a mellotron I hear???  God bless...

Peace Again:

Of course given the retromania of which we are not quite innocent here on these pages, a mellotron makes perfect sense...

Sisyphos and Paraphernalia in 2004

As we get ever closer to the present time, though still two decades distant almost, what do we get?
Well I found this one to be a little disappointing in comparison to both some of the earlier and later.

There is much more of a basic rock feel, perhaps not so surprising given they had lived through the alternative revolution of the 1990s (and made such great music in that decade too).  

Consider the acoustic piano song called Nothing Else to Say, which although augmented by a nice raw string quartet arrangement, and some (Freddie Mercury-like) harmony vocals later, leaves a little to be desired:

A nice electric guitar track called Singer Without Audience builds up nicely throughout its 10 minutes:

Back to Sisyphos with 1999 Moments Live

 

It's like they had a huge burst of progressive energy just after Moments, as you saw in the previous post, consider the pretty much textbook dissonances, with complex fuguing between organ and guitars featured on Parents:

For how much longer can they keep it up?
You will find out.

Back to the Sisyphos disco. with the remarkable 1996 Moments

 

I'm skipping over Raw Fish for now, this album which is fully a decade after the last post here, suddenly demonstrated a renewed dedication to progressive rock possibly inspired by all the exciting music being made by those alternative rockers, who let's be honest, made some remarkably creative and occasionally quite progressive stuff in that wonderful decade, musically, of the 1990s. In fact pure prog rock experienced quite a resurgence in that time too which has gone on to today (eg Pangee Hymnemonde, posted recently).  I mean, just check out the song that opens the album:

One of the ultra-progressive hallmarks of this composition is the way it keeps changing: chords, rhythms, ideas, vary dramatically, quite uncommercially, throughout a relatively short 7 minute period. Plus note tritone in first riff.  The addition of keyboards for extra color is a welcome importation too (compared to their earlier albums).

Wonderful stuff, and from now on, the band mostly plays in a classic hard electric prog rock style that is uniquely their own--which is unusual too.

I can't resist posting the lovely acoustic piano keyboard song called Heart Attack too, with its remarkable backing vocals and its just incredibly original chord progression, I believe this is similar or the same as the Language of Acceptance song from Mujokan:

Back to the Sisyphos discography with 1986 Under Pressure

I guess for this album in the mid-80s they decided to go with a more commercial rock sound with the jumpy rhythms typical of the period, although the absence of digital keyboards and percussion is really welcome. Everything is electric guitar and vocals based.  So for example the track called Find Myself Bored, with its suspended chord arpeggios (typical of that Police-influenced era) for the verse, passes into an instrumental bridge section with a nicely original riff:

You could also say it seems to herald the sound of alternative rock which knocked the culture out only 5 years later. Of course, those Seattle rockers in the vanguard couldn't possibly have been aware of them.

The Curse of Sisyphos, 1983

Great cover drawing, of course.  

Their second album, for me it was somewhat disappointing compared to the first. Starting track:

Sisyphos' Sitting on a Fence, 1984 [by request]

Info here.  This album is noticeably better than the preceding post which came a year later.

Sere Sta 50 mg is definitely bizarre:

Sisyphos' Practice in Tolerance, 1985 [by request]

 

Recall I posted their first album here (so long ago now it almost seems like a dream to me), this is their fourth release as you can see discogged here.  I really loved Mujokan which appeared back here and I still think maybe it's their best work--except for a wonderful outlier which appeared more recently and that I'll present at the end--stay tuned for that one.  I'm going to try to complete their huge and mostly unknown discography as best I can esp. the older albums, not necessarily the CDs from later which you can purchase.

So this album from 1985 is more basic, some standard chord changes and melodies with very little in the way of progressive music. It's all electric guitar based, nothing acoustic nor keyboard.

Amazingly they took the lyrics for the old standard Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel and put it over a doomy Black Sabbathy E minor riff with a totally different melody, to create something truly bizarre which you really have to hear to believe:

Setting aside that oddity consider the track called Dead Duck for the kind of music we're talking about here:

You might agree with me that the songs don't seem as developed as one would like, or as one knows they were able to achieve in the later Mujokan days.  

More to come-- lots more...

Back to Swiss Sisyphos with their long-awaited first album, Way to Express, from 1980

I reviewed these Swiss prog rockers before.  They are most notable for the fact they continued producing records from this original one in 1981 all the way down to the present day, with apparently the same lineup, albeit making use of a great deal of recycling.

The instrumental opening of A Rebel is Not the Devil, despite one annoying skip, is simply superb:





As before some of the harder rocking bluesier tracks are a little paint-by-numbers in the hair metal style with the commonest electric guitar cliches of solos.  Still, there are enough oddball chord changes and unique licks to make this quite an enjoyably spent 2/3 of an hour.  As Caesar would have approved: "Rockituri te salutant!"

Unknown Swiss progressive outfit Sisyphos in one of their many albums, Mujokan

Overall, very similar to German Iskander with the advanced, nicely rocking (up the hill and back down again ad infinitum) progressive symphonic, almost always featuring electric instruments, usually two well-tuned and loud el. guitars.  (An update on Iskander, for those who actually read my postings / rantings.  Someone mentioned in comments there exists a CD release of their masterpiece Boheme 2000, and indeed there is.  You can see that here.  This CD has bonus tracks, making up more than half an hour of extra unreleased music that is off the charts excellent progrock, and for this reason I strongly urge you guys to locate a copy and compare with the vinyl rip I (once) put there.  Really, thanks for these suggestions, sometimes, like in this case, they are right on the money!)

It's quite shocking both how prolific and therefore how underheard these guy are, to this day.
First of all look at their discography, beginning 1981, shortly thereafter crossing through into the CD world, 30 years later transitioning into the digital world and ending only a few years back with 2009's Retromania.  In total, 8 albums listed.  There's a couple of caveats here the most important being that they had an unfortunate tendency to recycle certain tracks, admittedly often good ones, and sometime changing their names, which therefore trespasses further onto the territory of annoying, like a friend you like who eats all the leftover meat-lover pizza you wanted for breakfast.  But you couldn't say no when he asked because it's not polite so instead you just complain to your wife who rolls her eyes and walks away.

There is tons of information relating to these guys online, starting with discogs:

Profile:
The band Sisyphos has been playing in the same formation for more than 30 years. Their music is somehow a reminder of the progressive rock sound of the seventies as well as of classical music – spherical music but with a hard rock touch, which is transformed as rough as it is produced. 
Members: René Senn (Guitar), Boris Bühler (Drums, Vocals), Herman Peter (Bass), Peter Scheidegger (Keyboards, Vocals)

Sweet but accurate blurb, gets to the heart of the matter for sure.

On this LP the old almost 19th century style vocal composition The Language Of Acceptance (Martins Garden) is superb:

The first chord, which is added minor 6th on top of the G7 (resolving to the key of Stevie C) with its harmony vocals, just gives me chills, referencing as it does the old pop tunes I heard as a kid blasting out of the cabinet-sized radio/amp/turntables we once had, but this song is so much more than a nostalgia homage ode, as it changes through various keys and sounds, never straying from the darkness and sudden turns down strange alleys.  Keeping it together is a melody that climbs up and down like Sisyphos's rolling rock over a couple of octaves even as the song ostensibly in the genre of pop promiscuously accepts all classical influences in its chords and structures.  To me this is really a masterpiece composition, automatically making it to my top ten list of best progressive songs heard in the last year.  Hopefully you will enjoy it too.  And thank you for that, Sisyphos guys...


Now back to the discography.

I've listened to all their albums by now and can tell you that in the beginning they were almost plain hard rock with some, but few, inventive changes, always eschewing the standard rock progressions of I IV V or its inverted form of V IV I which was clicheified so badly by the Rolling Stones, but nonetheless not much prog.  As far as I remember, most of their songs were even in E or A back then, sometimes G.

But after the 80s period they had a change of heart almost and went the wrong way completely-- the right way for us-- in the direction of more prog, and in 1996, the year alternative ruled the world, they came out with an album called Moments that to me is their masterpiece for all time.   And it's really shockingly good, made more so by the fact I had never heard it, or heard of it, until quite recently.  And I thought I knew all about prog!  What about you Tom? You knew?

Virtually the same album was made into a live release shortly thereafter, and today's LP called Mujokan came next after, in 2002.  Of course it must be that these true heroes suffered from their dedication to the old school vinyl format, since I see from the info there was no CD release of this particular work.  But that doesn't matter to you guys: here it is, digital and easily consumed like baby food but with all the flavours of adult mature mastery...

Mention should also be made about the album called Exit, by 7Pines which is Sisyphos keyboardist Peter Scheidegger in a trio with even more classic progressive rock nitrogycerine blasting out all the hallmarks of the genre: odd time signatures, original chord progressions often in minor seconds, crazy unison arpeggios in fourths, fast runs of atonal 'melodies', prolifically tossed minor seconds and tritones in every song-- etc., etc.

We all need the language of acceptance, the language of our hearts...