Island - Pyrrho (1975-1976)

This is the same Swiss band that put out the excellent album "Pictures" in 1977. Not altogether sure what is going on here because there are no liner notes at all. Pyrrho was an ancient Greek philosopher and the inside cover says "Based on a story by Akron" So I'm assuming this is a concept album, maybe even written to accompany a performance of some kind. The first disc is 14 nameless tracks listed as a "home recording". The second disc is the material performed live the following year. The music is comparable to that found on "Pictures" though not as dark and obviously lacking any studio wizardry. Also there's a bass player on both discs. For archival material from 35 years ago the sound is pretty good. Complex keyboard driven progressive rock, classical/jazzy, with excellent musicianship throughout. The label, Z-Records, is actually a CD store in Switzerland and this is their only release, so I'm suspecting this is quite a rarity outside of Switzerland - well probably in Switzerland too!

Disc 1 Home Recording 1975

14 Unnamed Tracks

Güge Meier - Drums, Percussion, Vocals
Egon Eggler - Bass, Vocals
Dani Rühle - Guitar, Vocals
Beni Jäger - Lead Vocals, Percussion
Peter Scherer - Keyboards, Vocals

Disc 2 Live Version 1976

24 Unnamed Tracks

Beni Jäger - Lead Vocals, Percussion
René Fisch - Saxophone, Vocals
Alfio Sacco - Bass, Vocals
Güge Meier - Drums, Percussion, Vocals
Peter Scherer - Keyboards, Vocals

Bye!