Pete And Royce: Suffering Of Tomorrow 1980 + Days Of Destruction 1981

 

 "PETE & ROYCE were one of the few local progressive bands operating in the greek late 70s underground scene. Led by painter Panayiotis Tsiros, they have made a name in the underground network, based on lengthy "hazy" concerts and an uncompromising underground attitude. Their sound was deeply rooted in the UK progressive scene, sitting somewhere between the prog/psych sound of the mid-period PINK FLOYD and the mellotron school (FANTASY, CRESSIDA, KESTREL, early B.J.H.), resulting in a style heavily relying on mellow soundscapes.
                                                                                   

During spring 1980 they captured on self-released vinyl the best tracks of their live shows. "Suffering of Tomorrow", was one of the very first greek private releases (on the mysterious Octoichos label) and the band's debut album, loosely based on the concept of death and decay (it is dedicated to Tsiros' deceased brother). With that exquisite basement feel encountered in the early ‘70s British proto-progressive bands, it is one of the essential Greek progressive albums of all times. Their second (another private press of 500 copies) LP, the notorious "Days of Destruction", has also mind blowing progressive moments! Not accidentally, Pete and Royce are a top noch POKORA's choice".

"PETE & ROYCE were one of the few local progressive bands operating in such framework (others like PLJ BAND for instance, never identified with the alternative rock audiences in order to achieve a major label deal). Led by painter Pete Tsiros, they have made a name in the underground network, based on lengthy "hazy" concerts and an uncompromising underground attitude. Their sound was deeply rooted in the UK progressive scene, sitting somewhere between the prog/psych sound of mid-period PINK FLOYD and the mellotron school.
                                                  

"Pete Tsiros (guitarist/singer) formed the band  around 1978 in Athens together with Lavrentis Tsinaroglou on (guitars/vocals), Basilis Ginos (keyboard), Fontas Chatzis (drums) and Elias Porfyris (bass). They recorded three albums, but the first two are the ones you must have! Suffering of Tomorrow was their debut, DIY project with only 500 copies released. It’s a mixture of early Pink Floyd albums (More album) and Cressida. I was really amazed when I first heard the recordings! I was sure the album is good, but I didn’t expect such an atmospheric sound on their album! Another thing I noticed immediately was the cover artwork, especially on the first album. Their second album called Days of Destruction is better as far it goes for production, but musically in my opinion a slight weaker then the debut. I only wish I could hear them live in some underground clubs in Greece back in the days!
                                                      

You say to yourself, that’s all fine, but how to get this almost impossible to find, LP? Well, we can all thank to Musicbazz for reissuing both two albums! Digipack came with poster and liner notes about the band. The members are still alive and well and they helped to master this release, so it's fully licensed by the members. The sound on CD is really good, so it is the restored cover artwork. I usually don’t like CD’s very much, but man you gotta check the artwork on this Digipack! It blew my mind!" - http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com/2012/03/pete-royce-suffering-of-tomorrow-days.html

"MusicBazz describes the music as thus: "Pete & Royce are considered as one of the top and totally unique psych/progressive rock bands coming from Greece. Wired around Panagiotis "Pete" Tsiros, during the late '70s through to the early '80s, Pete & Royce offered to the European prog underground scene an astounding blend of trippy moods and moves: flashy melodies, hard guitar biting-fuzz, night crawling rhythms, mystifying electronic shifts and strange lyrics like oracles from an unknown book of Apocalypsis (very compatibly, two key members of another top progressive Greek group named Apocalypsis were also involved importantly in the recordings of Pete & Royce, the keyboardist Vasilis Dertilis and the vocalist Giannis Palamidas). Both albums of Pete & Royce are internationally sought after for their dreamy Pink-Floydian atmosphere, the brilliant vocals and guitars of Tsiros himself, the topnotch fiery interplay of all the participating musicians (especially of the key member, keyboardist and co-composer, Vasilis Ghinos) and the rarer but equally mind-blowing cosmic funk moments."  http://unencumberedmusicreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/pete-royce-greece.html

SUFFERING OF TOMORROW  1980

                                                             

Suffering of Tomorrow is a concept album about death and decay, a poetic summation of inevitability, and the dissolution of all that we believe is permanent. It moves through an elegiac tunnel, with great generosity and even moments which feel like recompense to an unknown second-person. And indeed, the album is dedicated, obliquely, to Tsiros’ brother, who had died. Is it Pete’s

brother whose face he sees on the moon and round whose grave he wends his guitarwork? But rather than a constantly dismayed optimism, the musical force is a pessimism designed to negate destructive forces, to exact a transformation of grief and despair. And for that, it succeeds in finding a warmth, maybe even an idealism beyond personal and political turbulence. Each of Suffering of Tomorrow’s six (really, eight) tracks features long, complex passages, parts of which seem as if they could be from a lost Pink Floyd album recorded sometime between Ummagumma and Obscured By Clouds, or a lost sister to the Anglo-prog sound of Cressida—one of the highest compliments one can pay, especially when we have no idea whether these albums were available to Pete and Vassilis.
                                            

Other, more superficial touchstones might include Dom’s Edge of Time, and to a lesser extent the Swedish festival bands of the same era, such as Älgarnas Trädgård and Harvester. Though the occasional Anatolian guitar or organ flourish roils through, the sound of Suffering of Tomorrow is distinctly un-Greek, unashamedly pan-European, and as such holds very little in common with Kostas Tournas, Akritas, Aphrodite’s Child, and others who recorded for Greek Polydor. No less psychedelic or progressive than any of these, though perhaps more dystopian and pure, pure in the sense that Pete & Royce despised the phoniness and artistic compromise of their contemporaries who found shortcuts through the political haze to acceptability and stardom. And though not religious in any way, Suffering of Tomorrow is really a liturgical album with a rock structure; liturgical in the sense of leitourgía, a personal existential burden and public offering, the making manifest an unseen reality in its analog-electronic shifts, energetic guitar and organ lines that really search the air for something that has been lost, and reciprocally, offer something that has been found.

DAYS OF DESTRUCTION  1981  

                                                             

The title Days of Destruction clearly refers to this period of Greek political history, and at least three of the songs directly confront the political realities of Athens in 1981. “Passing Another Day” is a bittersweet ode to the impotence of inaction, frustrating but also full of mirth for the aesthetics of lost time, while “Dream” and the title track are concessions to the personal defeat felt by many young men in those days. It is an uneven album, not without the wistful late-night meandering of Suffering of Tomorrow, but less crepuscular and mysterious, more song-oriented and less of a sprawling concept album, more rollicking, and even less optimistic. The dedication to artistic purity so deeply felt in Suffering of Tomorrow seems more hung out.
                                                

As a result, although the songs are distinctive, it is a less original album, a more ecumenical effort, whose finest qualities are still those of many prog albums of the era: an existential ache whose resolutions, and irresolution, you chart less formally and more in terms of poetics. In spite of this, these songs could not have been recorded in any other place or time. Days of Destruction is a rock album, raw and expressly amateurish, so much to say and no statements to make. Or perhaps the most salient form of political protest was to create something apolitical, something un-stereotypically Greek, to chase artistic purity and lyrical freedoms, rather than consciously protest anything.

Suffering Of Tomorrow - Days of Destruction

                                               

The two albums by Pete & Royce are devoid of pretense, devoid of exercise, and entirely self-guided progressive blossoms from a tree now long chopped down to its stump. The core band members, by the mid-1980s, had gone their own ways, and only Vassilis stayed active in music. Attempts to contact them have been made, but as yet no sustained correspondence has been reached, and so the many mysteries of these two albums felt likely to remain until recently, against all odds, the albums were reissued, both on a single CD, and Suffering of Tomorrow as an LP, by Christos Tsanakas’ label Musicbazz. Extra demo tracks are also available at his Bandcamp site. Maybe the blood spilled by Cronus did not all fall into the sea!
                                                

Οι Pete & Royce ήταν μία από τις ελάχιστες συμφωνικές progressive rock μπάντες από την Ελλάδα. Με ηγέτη τον ζωγράφο Παναγιώτη “Pete” Τσίρο, έγιναν γνωστοί στον underground μουσικό χώρο, με τις μακροσκελείς συναυλίες και την αντισυμβατική τους νοοτροπία. Ο ήχος τους ήταν βαθιά

επηρεασμένος από τη Βρετανική progressive ροκ σκηνή, κάπου μεταξύ του psych / prog ήχου των Pink Floyd στα 70s και της Βρετανικής σχολής του mellotron (Fantasy, Cressida, Kestrel και πρώιμοι Barclay James Harvest), σε ένα στυλ βασιζόμενο στα ήρεμα ηχοτοπία των πλήκτρων.
O Βασίλης Δερτιλής και ο Γιάννης Παλαμίδας των Apocalypsis συμμετείχαν για ένα διάστημα στο πρότζεκτ του Τσίρου. Το ντεμπούτο των Pete & Royce με τίτλο “Suffering From Tomorrow” κυκλοφόρησε το 1980 σε ανεξάρτητη παραγωγή και θεωρείται ως ένα από τα σημαντικότερα δείγματα ελληνικού progressive rock. Στο “Days Of Destruction” (1981, Ocean), οι progressive επιρροές αναμίχθηκαν με πιο ευθεία ροκ προσέγγιση. Μετά το τρίτο τους άλμπουμ, το electro-funk LP “Royce” (1984) η μπάντα διαλύθηκε, εν μέσω της έκρηξης του punk.

Pete And Royce – Suffering Of Tomorrow + Days Of Destruction
Label: Musicbazz – zz001
Format:    CD, Compilation, Limited Edition
Country: Greece
Released: 2012
Genre: Rock
Style: Prog Rock, Symphonic Rock, Psychedelic Rock

SUFFRING OF TOMORROW  1980

                                                         

          
01. Flickering Light  (Written-By – Tsiros)  6:41
02. It's So Unreal  (Written-By – Tsiros)  6:53
03. Flowers  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:34
04. Suffering Of Tomorrow  (Written-By – Ghinos)  2:48
05. Time  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:47
06. Years Before (Maybe, Face Of The Moon, Round Your Grave)  (Written-By – Tsiros)  15:07

DAYS OF DESTRUCTION  1981        

                                                

  
07. It's Up To You  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:57
08. Am I Mistaken  (Written-By – Tsiros, Ghinos)  5:47
09. Don't Break Down  (Written-By – Tsiros)  4:09
10. Who Cares  (Written-By – Tsiros, Ghinos)  3:03
11. Dream  (Written-By – Tsiros)  2:44
12. You Make Me Feel  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:11
13. Give Me The Wings To Fly  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:40
14. Long Time Ago  (Written-By – Tsiros)  3:01
15. Passing Another Day  (Written-By – Tsiros, Ghinos)  2:51
16. Days Of Destruction  (Written-By – Tsiros)  4:57

MEMBERS   

                                                   

Acoustic Guitar – Lavrentis Tsinaroglou (tracks: 7 to 16)
Arranged By, Directed By – P. Tsiros (tracks: 7 to 16), B. Ghinos (tracks: 7 to 16)
Bass – Ilias Porfiris (tracks: 7 to 16)
Bass Guitar – I. Cavalieratos (tracks: 1 to 6), I. Porfiris (tracks: 1 to 6), M. Logothetis (tracks: 1 to 6)
Drums, Cymbal – Fontas Hatzis (tracks: 7 to 16)
Drums, Percussion – X. Hatzis (tracks: 1 to 6), G. Radeos (tracks: 1 to 6), C. Briolas (tracks: 1 to 6), V. Tsipouras (tracks: 1 to 6)
Guitar [Lead Guitar] – A. Galitis (tracks: 1 to 6), A. Gavriil (tracks: 1 to 6), Lavrentis Tsinaroglou (tracks: 7 to 16), Pete Tsiros (tracks: 7 to 16)
Keyboards, Arranged By – B. Ghinos (tracks: 1 to 6)
Keyboards, Synthesizer, Organ, Piano – Bill Ghinos (tracks: 7 to 16)
Lyrics By – G. Giuvanelis (tracks: 7 to 16), P. Tsiros (tracks: 7 to 16)
Piano [Acoustic Piano] – C. Zorbas (tracks: 1 to 6)
Twelve-String Guitar, Percussion, Effects [Vocal Effects] – Pete Tsiros (tracks: 7 to 16)
Twelve-String Guitar, Vocals, Producer, Cover, Design – P. Tsiros (tracks: 1 to 6)
Vocals – Lavrentis Tsinaroglou (tracks: 7 to 16), Pete Tsiros (tracks: 7 to 16)

MP3 @ 320 Size: 176 MB
Flac  Size: 415 MB