Tag Archives: Fractured

Lunatic Soul V: Fractured

If you have not read the other entries in this series, you can use the links at the bottom of this post. The Introduction to the whole set is here.

Fractured 

  • Released:  Oct. 6, 2017 
  • Colour: Dark red
  • My ranking: 7

If WoaFB arose from a depression rooted in personal events and difficulties, Fractured was the result of tragedy on an entirely different scale. The ‘ls’ logo on the cover is so deliberately splintered to be almost unrecognisable. 

This was–and probably remains–the most deeply autobiographical of all of Mariusz Duda’s work. It was the spring of 2016, and he was almost destroyed by the sudden death of Piotr Grudziński, Riverside’s guitarist and his closest friend, followed three months later by the sudden death of his father. One of the ways he kept his sanity in the dark months that followed was to work–and for Duda, “work” was creating music. Fractured is an album of words, a story of the struggle to regain the light. There is only one short instrumental track; all the rest of the songs give a disconcertingly intimate look at a man determined to get himself back on track and shake off–with variable success–the overwhelming grief and pain of profound loss. At first he considered releasing it under his own name, MD, but ultimately chose to situate it as a Lunatic Soul album, a prequel to Walking on a Flashlight Beam

Musically the album also departs: the lush atmospheric washes of the previous albums are almost entirely absent, replaced by a sound that is stark, open, ragged, with lots of acoustic guitar, sparse electronic accents, and even an orchestra. Most importantly though, we are introduced to something brand new: the sound of the piccolo bass. This is not a modified bass but a bespoke instrument, created by Mariusz’s Polish luthier especially for him, and it has proved to be a game-changer. It allows him to play in his beloved higher registers and create heavy, buzzy sounds somewhere between bass and guitar without violating his promise to never use electric guitar in the project. This instrument has taken on a significant role in the sound of both Lunatic Soul and Riverside, and it may well be unique in prog. 

Upside: Fractured introduced many Riverside fans to Lunatic Soul, and it is among the most popular of the LS releases. It is a beautifully conceived, deeply emotional album and I can fully understand how so many fans engage with it, both musically and especially lyrically. One of my favourite songs across Mariusz Duda’s entire output is “Anymore”, a heartbreakingly intimate glimpse into a family relationship. 

Downside: However…I must admit that this is not my favourite Lunatic Soul album, and that is because it does not feel like a Lunatic Soul album to me. The Hero and the author have become inextricably intertwined with each other: it is so clearly about Duda himself that the connection to the original protagonist is lost. It is an album that works in isolation, but not so much as part of the project. 

Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.

Part One: Fractured

Released: October 6th, 2017

Personnel:

Mariusz Duda: bass and acoustic guitars, piccolo bass, keyboards, percussion, programming, vocals

Wawrzyniec Dramowicz: drums

Marcin Odyniec: saxophone

Sinfonietta Consonus Orchestra

Tracklist:

  1. Blood on the Tightrope
  2. Anymore
  3. Crumbling Teeth and the Owl Eyes
  4. Red Light Escape
  5. Fractured
  6. A Thousand Shards of Heaven
  7. Battlefield
  8. Moving On

It is no secret by now (to anyone) that Fractured, the fifth Lunatic Soul album, was not the album of 2017 for me. I stuck it in at Number 5 but that was probably higher than it should have been.  To say that I was disappointed and baffled would be an understatement.  No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t take.  Fractured is anomalous, an outlier, straddling the border between Lunatic Soul and Riverside, not really one or the other: but perhaps closer in spirit to the last half of Love, Fear and the Time Machine than to any Lunatic Soul album.

It is hard to pin down exactly where the problem lies.  I know this might sound a bit…self-serving, but the warning bells rang when so many people, heretofore not particular LS fans, embraced the album with enthusiasm.  Lunatic Soul is a project with a fundamentally different feel than Riverside, darker and more ambient, less hard (but not “soft” by any means) dense and percussive, more adventurous and syncretic, perhaps even more nuanced.  It is a project that has a rather more specialized audience, and perhaps a more dedicated one; certainly a much smaller following than Riverside.  So it seemed distinctly odd that suddenly so many Riverside fans should profess to love the new album so much.

It is indeed an album of high accomplishment, with the trademark beautiful melodic passages that are a Mariusz Duda forté, and with some very powerful moments.  But somehow, it doesn’t add up.  The whole is not more than the sum of its parts.  It is an album of fragments, a couple of very good songs (“Blood on the Tightrope”, “Fractured”) and exceptional bits from other tracks (“A Thousand Shards of Heaven”, “Battlefield”). But it has few of the attributes of Lunatic Soul.  Duda has been moving away from lush analogue sounds towards more electronically-driven music, so the sound is sparser, more open, cooler. The rich density of small percussion is largely absent, replaced by a lot of guitar and electronic effects.  This trend began with Walking on a Flashlight Beam, but that album retains the Lunatic Soul gestalt.  Fractured has moved in a different direction.

Continue reading Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.