616: In Conversation with Michel St-Père of Mystery

At age 17, Michel St-Père was working as a sound engineer in a recording studio. Raised on a musical diet of rock music it wasn’t long before the band Rush captured his attention, quickly followed by the music of Yes and Genesis. His first serious musical project was a band that was going to be called Century, that was until they discovered a band in France going by the same name, who’d just released a recording. It was back to the drawing board. After a night of frustration throwing out name after name, it was the girlfriend of then keyboardist Sylvain Deharhais who suggested Mystery and the name stuck.

Mystery started life 1986, and as with most bands in their early days a stable line-up was hard to come by as members came and went. During this time St-Père with the help of his father took to building a recording studio and studying music recording and production. Members continued to come and go and it wasn’t until 1990 that the band membership stabilized. A demo was created with the hope of securing a major label deal. It did generate interest on the part of some record labels who suggested the band might be the next Yes, but in the end no deals came through. As a result, St-Père’s father suggested they should control their own destiny and release the music independently which they eventually would do. The first Mystery EP was released in 1992, and their first album in 1996. By that time, Michel had decided to form his own record label, Unicorn Digital to handle the music of Mystery. The label eventually expanded and began releasing the music of other artists, who number more than 50 at the time of this writing!  

In more than 30 years of existence, Mystery have released one EP, seven studio albums, two compilations, and two live albums. Through those years (and many line-up changes) Michel has remained the one constant.