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.