DJ Bootsie Quartet - Altas Of Sisyphus album release

This programme is held in Hungarian.

Nearly a year after his Bartók cover album, DJ Bootsie is returning with a new record, which he will present with his band on March 27, 2026 at the House of Music: his sixth full-length, Atlas of Sisyphus.

The Greek gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a stone up a mountain in the underworld forever, only for it to roll back down again. His story thus became a symbol of human perseverance and struggle — at once tragic and uplifting. The archetype of Sisyphus lives in all of us: as ordinary people and as creators we often feel as if we are running the same circles endlessly. On this record Bootsie offers a contemporary paraphrase of the Sisyphus myth as a form of release, asking us to admit that we can do nothing else but keep going, because it is our craft, our fate, and it sustains us — whether that be vocation, duty, or a “whim.”

The new album, Atlas of Sisyphus, is timeless material born in its own universe: at once cool and elegant, an emotionally rich record. The pieces were not conceived in the spirit of overplanned perfection — heavy, industrial textures intertwine with delicate, meditative melodies, often in an improvisational manner. The tracks juxtapose cold, machine-like abstract rhythms with floating timbres, but this time the drums intentionally slip and the samples are deliberately raw and dirty. The record is accompanied throughout by a kind of “ethereal industriality”: while letting go of control, the sounds simultaneously build massive walls and soaring atmospheres.

Bootsie began laying the record’s foundations back in 2020 during the pandemic, then continued work on it in the summer of 2025 after finishing his most recent album, the electronic Bartók recompositions collection Bartokosmos. The album’s musicality feels as if the author-producer consciously examined what alternative path he might have taken after the 2009 milestone Holidays in the Shade, had In Solem Verti not followed. Bootsie put it this way: “I feel a strong parallel between Holidays… and this record: that was the last time I saw the world so grimly.” He added: “To me this album is like when Delon or Redford peer out with a bitter look from behind the upturned collar of a trench coat. That mood appears in moments on the record.”

Atlas of Sisyphus consciously embraces the idea that it is persistence, not victory, that matters, and in the classic hip-hop do-it-yourself spirit everything should be done by one’s own strength, without compromises, instinctively. The result is a colorful, varied-tempo album that masterfully fuses several genres (hip hop, electronica, folk, bass, jazz, ambient) into a characteristically Bootsie work: the ominous throb of “Headless Horseman,” Balkan’s playful, at times circus-grotesque folk motifs, or the cosmic soaring of Ikarus Orkestar all connect organically, atlas-like. Industrial noises, shuffling feet, gut-shaking bass and fragile melancholy hand in hand guide the listener along Sisyphus’s path.

DJ Bootsie, as one of the founders of the Hungarian underground hip-hop scene, has been stretching the boundaries of the genre for decades. Over his career he pioneered the combination of hip hop, jazz and folk with electronics, and later with classical music. From this multifaceted process emerged his distinctive, unmistakable musical world, which he continues to enrich and redefine with each new record.

Contributors:
Grünvald László – vibraphone, percussion
Lázár Tibor – drums
Solymosi Vilmos / DJ Bootsie – samples, scratch
Weisz Gábor – saxophone, flute

Guest: Kiss Árpád (Mnemonics) – trumpet
Visuals: VJ Kemuri