Welcome to the second in my Riverside reviews series.

Voices in My Head (EP)

Released March 2005

Personnel

• Mariusz Duda: bass, vocals, acoustic guitar, lyrics
• Piotr Grudziński: electric guitar
• Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
• Michał Łapaj: keyboards

Tracklist

1. Us
2. Acronym Love
3. Dna Ts. Rednum Or F. Raf
4. The Time I Was Daydreaming
5. Stuck Between
6. I Believe (live)
7. Loose Heart (live)
8. Out of Myself (live)

The second Riverside release, Voices in My Head, was offered as a sort of placeholder for the fans, after the excitement of the first album and while they waited for the next. It is brief, as befits an EP, presenting five new tracks and three live performances of songs from Out of Myself.  It showcases the gentle, acoustic side of the band, and is notable for being the first studio appearance of their new keyboard player Michał Łapaj, who had taken over from Jacek Melnicki.

The new tracks on Voices in My Head are all ballads save one (which is exceptional in more than this), essentially acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, and Duda’s lovely voice.  The three live tracks were taken from a show played in Warsaw in 2004, and maybe can be regarded as a road-test to see how well Łapaj was going to fit in.

Overall the EP is pleasant, the tracks short, beautiful, acoustic guitar and piano; but too many ballads in a row leads one to perhaps forget that this is (theoretically) a Riverside release and not a Mariusz Duda solo effort with guests.  Still, these songs arrow straight for the heart, taking full advantage of the delicately intimate side of Duda’s voice and lyrics, silky and yearning. “The Time I was Daydreaming” and “Acronym Love” (which would re-emerge a decade later as a somewhat re-worked live showstopper) are the best songs along that line.

And then…the remarkable “Dna Ts. Rednum Or F. Raf”, with its too-clever-by-half backward title, charges headlong into the middle of this otherwise rather sedate set: a rocking, chugging track with a rumbling bassline and compelling hypnotic rhythm (no live drums, but drum machine), it thunders along powerful and unique, and remains one of the outstanding tracks in the entire Riverside canon.  I don’t know if it ever got played live, but it might be worth seeing—this track at full bore has roof-raising potential.

Overall, Voices in My Head lacks the stylistic variety and signature sound associated with Riverside as a band; it seems more a Duda/Łapaj effort, with some Grudziński thrown in.  I tend to sample this EP rather than listen to it through:  “Dna Ts. Rednum Or F. Raf” has become a staple, and a couple of other tracks get play depending on mood.  I think what we have is what it was intended to be:  a collection of extra tracks assembled to help fans endure the wait between albums.  It certainly does not have the status or quality of the band’s other EP, but more on that one later.

Welcome to my series of reviews of the Riverside catalogue.   You can read my intro and initial rankings here.

I hope you find them interesting, and I would be pleased if you’d leave a comment or two…even if you disagree.  Hell, especially if you disagree, because hearing your opinion is more interesting than just having an echo chamber.

Besides…if too many people agree with me, I’ll suspect I’m doing something wrong.

Out of Myself

Released: Poland 2003 with original cover/2004 rest of world, cover by Travis Smith

 Personnel:

• Mariusz Duda: vocals, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, lyrics
• Piotr Grudziński: guitars
• Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
• Jacek Melnicki: keyboards

Tracklist:

1. The Same River
2. Out of Myself
3. I Believe
4. Reality Dream
5. Loose Heart
6. Reality Dream II
7. In Two Minds
8. The Curtain Falls
9. ok

Out of Myself  is the album that introduced Riverside to the world…and for a first album, this is as grand an entrance as can be imagined.  Imbued with an astonishing sophistication of sound and vision, it is confident and forward-looking; call it what you will — prog rock, prog metal — this album married the various band-member influences (and inevitable comparisons to Certain Other Bands) into one glorious progressive bundle.  Influences aside, Riverside marched into progressive consciousness as an entity unto itself, and the band has managed to maintain its unique sound throughout its subsequent stylistic incarnations.

As it turns out, an early version of their music, raw and unrefined, exists on a 7-track “demo”.*  A couple of the tracks from this made it onto Out of Myself more or less intact (just cleaned up), but others are very differently conceived (such as “The Curtain Falls”), one has completely disappeared into oblivion (never rerecorded as anything that I have found), and one reappeared much later as a track on the “Conceiving You” single.  This bit of history provides a fascinating glimpse of the wobbly first steps of what would eventually become one of the most polished and professional musical outfits around.

Out of Myself pulls no punches: it kicks off with “The Same River”, a 12-minute prog opus, and from there manages to encompass an impressive range of styles: delicate acoustic ballads, pure face-stomping instrumental metal, screams and growls, the willingness to wander off in different musical directions and back again.  We discover Mariusz Duda’s intimate, introspective lyric style, and his lovely distinctive voice.  And behind it all what would become Riverside’s hallmark sound: Piotr Grudziński’s great winding guitar themes and melodies and Duda’s intricate bass playing, anchored by solid drumming and the vast soundscape wash of the keyboards.  It would take another album and a new keyboard player for all these elements to coalesce, but this first album is remarkable for how thoroughly it introduces us to the essence of Riverside.

Continue reading Out of Myself →

I am glad you asked.  My answer: the best band in the world.  But you probably saw that one coming.

I have given this post a heavy edit; I first wrote it in 2015, when the discography consisted of five albums and two EPs, and one live album. I added new notes with each release up to Wasteland, but it became a mess, and the sequence hard to follow. So to hell with that. I will condense it into a list of official release dates.

 The other thing though, is that I find I must revise my rankings. After a decade of listening and careful thought, I realize that there simply are albums I love way less than I want to. I mean, I don’t want to not love (I won’t say ‘dislike’ because it is not that) any of the albums, but I have to be honest enough to admit when they don’t work for me, and sometimes I wasn’t. However, I am not going to touch the actual reviews that I link to. For the most part, they say what I want them to say.

 Riverside Release Dates:

• Out of Myself: 2003 Poland/2004 Rest of World
• Voices in My Head (EP): 2005
• Second Life Syndrome: 2005
• Rapid Eye Movement: 2007
• Anno Domini High Definition: 2009
• Memories in My Head (EP): 2011
• Shrine of New Generation Slaves: 2013
• Love, Fear and the Time Machine: 2015
• Eye of the Soundscape: 2016
• Wasteland: 2018
• ID.Entity: 2023

Note:  Eye of the Soundscape has been reviewed  here.  I have not included it in the rankings below for reasons explained in that review.

But to get started…since I am reviewing the albums, I guess I am also rating them, one against the other, a task that is no trivial matter. And as with all such lists, it is mostly a reflection of my own personal taste and inclination and less a judgement call on the objective quality of the music. The band’s output varies so greatly in style and approach that it is impossible to actually pin down a genre beyond the broadest notion of “progressive”, and it should come as no surprise that some of their explorations resonated with me more than others.

Anyway, let’s begin with a rough ranking, from least favourite to most beloved, with a little capsule explanation for why they are in this order.

Voices in My Head (EP): made up of brief ballads and one great song, and a couple of very good ones. Only half the tracks are new, the other half are live versions of songs from the first album.  See review here

Love, Fear and the Time Machine: This is the album that shifted its position the most: it was fifth, but alas, over the years I have come to like it less and less. It is an oddball.  LFatTM is a rather more delicate and personal album — personal to Mariusz Duda that is — than any of the others, and with the exception of two great tracks, it just doesn’t work for me. See review here.

Shrine of New Generation Slaves: This is the most variable in quality of all the albums—there are a couple of excellent tracks, and alas a couple that are downright mediocre, something I regret to have to say about any Riverside song. The brilliant “Night Sessions” bonus tracks pull this album off the bottom. See review here.

Out of Myself: There is something about this album that keeps it from moving up higher in the ranks. I like it when I play it but I don’t get the urge to play it very often. Michał Łapaj had not yet joined the band, and so the sound is not yet “signature”; also, there are fewer (maybe only one) really stunning tracks than one generally finds on a Riverside album.  See review here.

Rapid Eye Movement: The songs here range from brilliant to unmemorable, but alas it is the unmemorable that dominate. They are good songs but for some reason they simply do not stick in my memory – rarely an earworm from this album.  However, the bonus disc is a revelation: these remixes and semi-experimental long instrumentals show a side of the band perhaps less appreciated than it should be. It is different enough from REM I to be almost a separate album. See review for REM here.

Memories in My Head: (EP) This EP represent the absolutely classic Riverside sound, in the form of three long, lovely proggy songs. If only the last one had fit in better….  Review is here.

Second Life Syndrome: This is a glorious album, not quite at the top because it is a bit variable in quality, but the monumental title track is one of the best, truly inspired long prog epics ever recorded by anyone, ever.  Review here.

Wasteland: Riverside the trio, their first album as such, and with a whole new sound and feeling…and it is a massive accomplishment, from a band that has found their footing again.  It took me a while to come to the conclusion that it does not quite reach the inspirational heights of ADHD, and it edges ahead of SLS mostly because the guys are now much more experienced craftsmen and performers.  Review is here.

ID.Entity: This album is stunningly good, and it really was in the running for the best (for me); I do believe it encapsulates the entire history of the band in a brilliant way, and is enormously energetic — it is in fact so close to the top that I cannot promise that I won’t change my mind later. But as for right now….  Review is here

Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD): Ahhh yes, kick-ass progressive metal, a side of the band that surprised people I think, loud and raunchy and hard and relentless; in my mind the guys are at the absolute top of their game on this album. It was the first album for which they took a different approach to the recording of it, and boy did it work.  ID.Entity comes very close, but the tight conciseness of ADHD, and the epic genius of “Left Out” was just too high a bar to get over. Review here.

See also a discussion of the Reality Dream live album/DVD here.