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Lunatic Soul VII: Through Shaded Woods

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This is the last of the current Lunatic Soul releases I have summarized. The eighth album is due to be released later this year, and of course I will review it when I get the opportunity.

Thank you for reading this series of posts. If you have not, you can start at the beginning here, and work your way along by following the arrows at the bottom of each post. Feel free to browse the rest of the site—there are lots of reviews!

Through Shaded Woods 

  • Released: Nov. 13, 2020
  • Colour: Dark green
  • My ranking: 4

Through Shaded Woods joined Lunatic Soul I, LS II, and Impressions on the side of Death in the Circle of Life and Death, the first album to do so since 2011. It was intended, somewhat ironically, to embrace life and light–and boy did it ever do that. Musically, it was closer in essence to the first two Lunatic Soul albums, but there is much less ambience and trance. The sparse and jagged sounds of the previous three albums were also gone. TSW deeply celebrates traditional Slavic folk and ancient rhythms brought into modern times: the album is pure folk-rock exuberance run through Mariusz Duda’s prog filter. 

It is a much more acoustic album, but it is not a delicate album by any means, with plenty of riff-driven heaviness compliments of the piccolo bass which is used extensively throughout. “Navvie” has to be one of the most kick-ass opening tracks in Duda’s entire discography, and the rest of the album lives up to it, at least until the last song (more on that below). The enthusiasm is infectious–it makes you want to dance, even through the two spectacular proggy epics, “Summoning Dance” (which completely lives up to its name) and “The Passage,” featuring one of Duda’s heaviest riffs. The album is unique in that there are no guests at all: Mariusz plays everything including the drums. 

Lyrically, we pick up on the Hero’s journey after he was left to wander at the end of Lunatic Soul II, lost in limbo as he begs for another chance at a new life. He kept his memories to be sure, but these included recollections he’s found he’d rather not carry with him. He is desperate for the opportunity to choose again. However, we do not follow the actions of the protagonist in any detail–we are still deep in his psychology, his desires, regrets, and yearnings, coming to terms with his past. This of course reflects how Duda himself shifted his lyric approach to the project in the years between 2010 (when theoretically it had ended) and 2014 when he returned to it. The inner world of the protagonist takes on much more importance because the lyrics began to reflect the events and issues in Duda’s own life at the time he wrote the albums. 

Upside: Exhilaration and sheer unadulterated joy suffuse this album; when Mariusz is having fun, you can surely hear it. Also, the 27-minute long instrumental bonus track “Transition II” is an absolute phenomenon of long-form atmospheric writing on his part. TSW (along with Fractured) has probably done the most to introduce Lunatic Soul to the Riverside fanbase who hadn’t paid much attention to it, as well as to a wider prog community, and it is easy to see why. 

Downsides: a couple, which stand out because the album is, in general, spectacularly good. First, the last song, “The Fountain”–yes I know how beloved it is–is overdone. All those swelling strings…alas I find drags the overall feeling down some. Second, handling the drums himself. Mariusz is a competent drummer, and I know why he chose to do it himself, but there are times when a song or two demands more than competence. I love the album but I miss Dramowicz’s presence.

Lunatic Soul VI: Under the Fragmented Sky

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Under the Fragmented Sky 

  • Released: May 25, 2018 
  • Colour: Violet–it is also the only album without the “ls” logo in any form. 
  • My ranking: 5

Generally when an album is made, not everything written will make it onto the finished product. This was true for Fractured: some of the music Duda created did not fit that album’s theme and mood. However, there were some very powerful pieces that were left over, songs that begged for release, and so he decided to complete them and make a kind of “companion album” to Fractured. The result was Under the Fragmented Sky, and the two albums could not be more starkly different. UtFS is bright, forward-looking, almost upbeat–there is still an undercurrent of anxiety but you can feel the struggle to overcome it. It is also very strongly electronic–in some ways it is a precursor to the electronica project that became Duda’s fourth “musical world” in 2020. 

It is mostly instrumental, sparse and powerfully melodic; lyrically it is closer to the Lunatic Soul story than anything on Fractured. Interestingly it seems to be in two parts: the first half is open and more acoustic, the second becomes darker, more electronic-driven, yet somehow it all hangs together. It is difficult to believe that the songs came out of the same sessions that produced Fractured. The album ends with the brilliant “Untamed”–the “wind-up” song is not perhaps Duda’s strongest skill, but “Untamed” is one of his best and a just plain great track. It doesn’t hurt that it is anchored by Dramowicz’s spectacular drumming, the only song on the album on which he appears. 

It was at this time, just before UtFS was released, that Mariusz revealed something else: The Circle of Life and Death, a graphic that illustrated the relationships that each of the Lunatic Soul albums was to have with each other. He had first thought of the idea with WoaFB; when it became clear that the project was going to continue he needed to plan out the rest of the releases. Since the overall theme was life, choices, and rebirth into a new reality, the albums would follow a cycle, ever repeating. The Side of Death was where the original project began, with LS I, II, and Impressions (as a side branch); the Side of Life held WoaFB, Fractured, and UtFS as a supplement. The music also had different characteristics for each side of the Cycle.  

Upside: Bright, electronic and quite experimental at times, and yet much closer in feel to Lunatic Soul than Fractured is. Brief, laser-beam focused and miraculously cohesive, the album has the “flow” (even Duda admits this to be true) that Fractured did not quite achieve. 

Downside: it is difficult to place this in the Lunatic Soul narrative sequence, since the lyrics are not like those on Fractured. So far it is a “supplement” in the way Impressions is, but it is not equivalent to Impressions: you can’t just ignore the words. 

Lunatic Soul V: Fractured

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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 IV: Walking on a Flashlight Beam

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Walking on a Flashlight Beam 

  • Released: Oct. 13, 2014
  • Colour: Deep blue
  • My ranking: 2

Four years after the Hero was apparently abandoned, fate unresolved, Mariusz Duda took up his story again. On the fourth Lunatic Soul album we would learn something of the protagonist’s past: how and why did he come to die? In other words, Walking on a Flashlight Beam became the prequel to Lunatic Soul I, recounting a tale of self-imposed isolation, loneliness, and longing, picking up the clues left in the song “Transition” from Lunatic Soul II and turning them into an album unmatched in the entire Lunatic Soul discography. 

It was an album that came out of a very difficult time in Duda’s life both personally and creatively, and this is reflected in a shift in the narrative style. The lyrics turn inward, examining the psychological state of the protagonist–we see the Hero’s deepest fears and yearnings, and begin to understand the reasons for his actions. The personal darkness that Mariusz Duda was experiencing form the foundation of the words he would write. 

Walking on a Flashlight Beam is the first album on which electronic elements make their appearance, and the sound of the album is sparser, stark and less ambient, evoking emotions of loneliness and anxiety, terror, and finally calm, as the Hero makes his way through the songs. The words are heartbreaking; the instrumental pieces redolent with disquiet. The only guest is drummer Wawrzyniec Dramowicz.

WoaFB is clearly Duda at the top of his game; many fans consider it to be the best Lunatic Soul of all, and I agree with them. The structure of the album exemplifies what Duda calls ‘flow’: the trajectory of the songs, the music, the arrangements all work seamlessly together as we accompany the Hero on his terrifying psychological journey. WoaFB is Inspiration at its finest; however, the emotional and psychological cost of making the album may well have been too much for him to ever contemplate repeating. The words of the remarkable “Gutter” are autobiographical: for a while Mariusz truly feared that in order to accomplish something great, he must excoriate his soul and live in psychological darkness.

Upside: see above. It’s a tour de force.

Downside: <shrugs>

Lunatic Soul: Searching for the Light

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This long overdue summary is something I’ve been trying to accomplish for a couple of years now but somehow I couldn’t get the feel of it right. The format I used for the Riverside reviews didn’t really work for Lunatic Soul. So I’ll try it this way: I’ve written a brief biographical sketch of each album in order of release date, and included what I think makes it work, what doesn’t work, and how I rank it. I will post up these sketches over the next week or so. Once I set up my Substack they will appear there as well. 

The rankings: this is not a matter of liking/disliking anything. I love all the albums but to somewhat different degrees, and for different reasons, which I have tried to explain. I expect I am in the minority for some of these, so if you agree or disagree, let me know! 

First though–a (very) brief introduction to the project. A complete and detailed history of Lunatic Soul will be found in my upcoming biography of Mariusz Duda. 

Continue reading Lunatic Soul: Searching for the Light →

The Music of 2025 So Far

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What have I been listening to this year? A few things have come out that I might go so far as to recommend. I have to say, what I’ve heard up to this point is better than a lot of what I heard last year; 2024 was one of the more mediocre years for music I can recall. I  have a lot of hope for 2025. 

The way things are going so far, this year looks to be one of those instrumental years. Not everything obviously, but there seems to be a fair amount of post-metal/post-rock, prog/jazz fusion, and atmospheric ambience/electronica in the pipeline. Speaking of upcoming albums, of course the BIG anticipatory release for 2025 is the new Lunatic Soul, which, last I heard, is supposed to be long enough to make into an old-school-style double album, 90 minutes worth of music (as opposed to a regular-length album stretched over two discs) and will hit in the fall. I expect we’ll learn more about that at some point (trust me…I’m a LOT more excited than I sound here!).

For some of ya, the BIG album is already out, the new Steven Wilson solo. Yeah, I’ll say some words about that.

Continue reading The Music of 2025 So Far →

The Year In Music: 2024

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Every year I complain that I didn’t really listen to as much music as I wanted to, and every year I manage to scrape together some sort of list of music that I did listen to. This year was not different except that I was even more distracted than usual for most of the year and I often found that I was not in the mood, or did not have the opportunity to really explore new music. Work and some personal matters were kicking my ass, and when I was in the proper headspace a much more important project took my focus. Somehow though I ended up with a long list of about two dozen albums, so I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

However, I have to say that I found this year’s crop of releases less than compelling. Nothing really blows me away. This is not to say that there aren’t good albums on the list, but overall The Year in Music feels a bit underwhelming. However, it is also The Year of the Vocalist: man, there are some great singers on some of these albums! Manuel Gagneux, Yann Ligner, Patryk Zwoliński… you guys killed it.

In terms of genres: 2024 has made up for last year’s dearth of metal. I heard quite a bit of it this year, along with prog and prog-related, industrial, and some art-rock. There was no Steven Wilson this year, so no pop. (/jk)

I have nine solid contenders, and if I had to pick one more to make it an even 10… well, there are four leftovers of roughly equal merit so I might say something about those, too. I’m still not real sure about the order though, or which album I would make “Number 1”. There are two or three that could take that spot.

Continue reading The Year In Music: 2024 →

Review: Lunatic Soul Walking on a Flashlight Beam at Ten

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Walking on a Flashlight Beam turns ten years old on October 13, 2024. This album has a special place in my heart, and I want to explain why. It was the first Lunatic Soul album that was released after I became a fan, but that is certainly not the only reason or even the main one. Of course, what I’m about to say are my personal observations, and you may disagree with me–but you’d be wrong. 🙂

I’m not going to talk about the songs, so if you want to read about those, I have a full review here.

When Walking on a Flashlight Beam came out in 2014, it was almost immediately recognized as something very special in the Mariusz Duda discography by many reviewers and fans. It was the fourth Lunatic Soul release, a solo project which originally was supposed to consist of only two albums (Impressions is an instrumental supplement), but at some point, happily for us, Duda decided to keep the project going.

It was an album that was made during a very dark time in Duda’s life. Personal and emotional issues weighed on him; and when he first went into the studio, things didn’t go well. In order to recapture inspiration, he had to re-adjust his thinking and change the ideas, the approach, sounds and mood. Originally there were to be guest musicians, but he abandoned that idea: only Wawrzyniec Dramowicz remained on drums. There would be much less of the lush orientalism of the first three albums, and much more in the way of electronics. Shifting creative gears worked because this masterpiece came out of it. And it is a masterpiece.

There have been three subsequent Lunatic Soul albums in the decade since, so how does Walking on a Flashlight Beam hold up?

WoaFB is one of those albums in my collection that is of such importance that I cannot play it very often. I feel that when I do play it, I must give it my full attention, to honour it with nothing less than my entire listening presence. I own a few other albums like that, but not many.

For me, it is the most inspired, the most cohesive, the most nuanced, and indeed most intellectual of the entire Lunatic Soul project, and perhaps of Duda’s entire output.* After ten years it has lost none of its power; in fact it has gained stature as the other LS albums have been released. WoaFB reached a pinnacle in terms of flow, vision, and thematic integrity that the other albums did not quite achieve. In the wider context, it pulls the first albums (LS I, LS II, and Impressions) together, and provides an anchor point for the whole project. It is an album that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

There are LS albums that I play more often, that I consider “favourites”: the astonishing Lunatic Soul I; Impressions; and the joyous Through Shaded Woods; but I will state outright that by any objective measures, Walking on a Flashlight Beam is the best. It is a true showcase of Mariusz Duda’s creative powers, an album where all the elements–the music, the lyrics, the mood and atmosphere–came together in a perfect storm of inspiration.

*with the possible exception of “Transition II”, to which I have much the same response as WoaFB but this of course is not an album, and is a bit of an outlier in the LS canon.

There will be much more about this album in my upcoming book.

 

 

 

Music of 2024: Update

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Back in April when I posted the first look at early releases, I mentioned that I have been busy and haven’t had a lot of time to really seek out new music (or old music, for that matter, apart from the ‘old’ music I’ve been listening to as research). That situation has not changed much. Over the summer I focused more heavily on writing my book, so I continued to not hear much new music; now I am back at the wage-earning slog and trying to write my book and …yeah. Even less time.

Still, in the months between April and now I have managed to squeeze in some new stuff, and here’s what I got so far. Up for brief comment this time around:

Albums

Airbag: The Century of the Self

Bent Knee: Twenty Pills Without Water

Elephant9: Mythical River

Bill Leeb: Model Kollapse

Loma: How Can I Live Without a Body?

Oceans of Slumber: Where Gods Fear to Speak

Wretchgod: Suffering Upon Suffering

A few singles from:

Body Count, Klone, Front Line Assembly, Kanaan/Meller, Amplifier

In this post I’ll do the singles. It takes longer to review albums and I’m not done yet. This is not a ranking, but alphabetical order.

Amplifier: “Guilty Pleasure”

A single in advance of a new Amplifier album, apparently called Gargantuan, to be released some time this year. Their last album came out in 2023, and I ranked it pretty high for the year, tied with Riverside’s for the top spot, despite a couple of rather messy songs. The rest were lovely.

“Guilty Pleasure” sounds like one of those messy tracks, wherein everything seems to be happening everywhere all at once, which is okay if you like that sort of thing, but I am not overly fond of it. I like a song that has some kind of recognizable direction to it, or at least  not sounding like it is galloping madly off in all directions (hat tip: Stephen Leacock). This single barely holds it together. Which means I have to wait to hear the rest of the album before I decide to buy it.

https://amplifier.bandcamp.com/track/guilty-pleasure-advance

 

Body Count: “Psychopath” and “F*** What You Heard”, released in advance of their new album apparently called Merciless. This is supposed to drop sometime this year, but so far there has been no word on when.

These are both solid offerings, the first reminiscent of tracks like “Carnivore” and “Here I Go Again” from earlier albums, Ice-T rapping about unrestrained predatory violence: it’s not bad but we’ve already heard it. The second though is a rap-metal monster, political and angry, and I swear the duo of Will Dorsey (drums) and Vincent Price (bass) is one of the heaviest, most thunderous rhythm sections in the business.

 

Front Line Assembly feat. Seeming: “Molotov” (remix)

“Molotov” the original comes from the 2018 FLA album Warmech, which is the OST for the video game Airmech Wastelands. Seeming is an indie/post-punk/industrial duo with three albums out so far: in my blog I ranked their Sol: A Self-Banishment Ritual as the best album of 2017.

FLA has released a few remixes of pieces from Warmech, and I noticed “Molotov” because it is one of the best tracks from the original album, and, well, Seeming. It is remixed to dial back the synths and include lyrics, written and sung by Alex Reed, on resistance politics: “Revolution is not a mood/revolution is not a vibe/…revolution is showing up” he declares. It really works: Seeming skillfully redirect the energy in the original piece and create a powerful new song.

 

Kanaan/Meller: “Olympics”

A joint track between Robert Kanaan, a Polish electronica musician, and Riverside’s (and ex-Quidam) guitarist Maciej Meller, celebrating, well, its title. It is a soaring, melodic instrumental piece with lots of synths, nice guitar, and well-worth the few bucks to buy it on Bandcamp.

 

Klone: “Interlaced” and “The Unseen”

These are out in advance of the new album The Unseen, to be released on November 8th—a bit of a surprise, really, since their previous album was released just last year. Anyway, there is no mistaking Klone, with their orchestral, guitar-rich heavy prog and Yann Ligner’s soaring voice. Both these tracks are strong, the first one featuring a couple of jazzy sax solos, the second getting pretty metal with Ligner almost growling. They bode well for the album, but also suggest we aren’t going to get anything radically new from the band in terms of sound or direction. That is, there isn’t a lot to say specifically about the songs because if you know what Klone sounds like, you know what these tracks will sound like.

As noted, I’ll post up comments on the albums when I have time to finish listening/thinking about them. I did in fact sample more than just this, but so far these I’ve listened to enough to have something to say. Who knows… I may be able to add to the list as time goes on. Stay tuned.

Music in 2024: April Quick View

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 It’s time to update what’s new in music in 2024 that has at least caught my attention (or enough of the attention of others for me to try it).

It’s been a bit slow this year, but I’ve also not been actively looking – several other things are keeping me busy. I’ll save or bookmark something, but it might take a week or three for me to get around to focusing on it, so right now, there is not much here. Anyway, in no particular order….

Continue reading Music in 2024: April Quick View →