The past few months have been very slow on my blogānot, probably, that anyone has noticed, but stillā¦Iāve let it slide. I have not been talking much about new music, because I havenāt been listening much to new music, and there is a reason for that: something else has taken precedence.
Ā Hereās a bit of context:
A few years ago (well, more than a few, but letās not talk about how quickly time is passing…), I started a series of posts in which I ranked and reviewed all of Riversideās studio albums and EPs. I meant to do the same thing for Lunatic Soul but somehow it didnāt happen: this project is of such profound importance to me that I struggle to express how I feel about it. I have written reviews for all the LS albums from Walking On a Flashlight Beam to Through Shaded Woods, but I always felt at a loss when I tried to explain the whole projectās impact.
Then something entirely unexpected happened. I mean, completely out of the blue, I never saw it coming, never in a thousand years would it have occurred to me, all of that.
One day I responded to a text message, and in the middle of the conversation, the sender suddenly said: āYou know what I think? One day you should write a book. About Riv/LS, maybe MD stuff. I can help you.ā
It is that time once again, when I gather together the music that I have liked over the past year, and give a brief explanation of why I like it.
This year feels like a good year, and that is because most of the albums Iāve included feel like they may just stick around longer than the time it took to get to know them well enough to talk about them. Other of my year-end lists do include entries that never made much impact beyond the listening and inclusion; as much as I thought I liked them at the time, they ultimately made no lasting impression, which is not what I hope for. This year, either the albums are better, or I have made more of an effort to exclude the ones that might be short-lived. Or both. Still, there are a handful at the bottom end of this yearās list that are unlikely to be long-term players, but that do have some good songs, so hopefully I will continue to sample them.Ā
There are fourteen albums here that represent a relatively narrow set of genres compared to other years. There is a fair amount of prog, or at least a fair amount of music from bands with a proggy reputation, which might be a bit of a surprise if you know me. I do not consider myself a fan of modern prog and do not seek it out, mostly because I find the vast majority of it tedious and entirely predictable. However, there are a handful of bands who fall under that (admittedly rather broad) umbrella who can manage to sound fresh, so I canāt write the genre off completely. A few of them released pretty good albums this year. There is some industrial/industrial-related, some post-rock, and straight-up rock. No metal or post-metal this year, and no oddball genres.Ā
In terms of the rankingā¦ Iāve put numbers on them but except for the three or four at the bottom, those numbers donāt mean very much. Itās crowded at the top. There are some clear distinctions among some albums, but there are also places where making a choice is largely arbitrary.Ā
Generally I donāt have much to say about new music so early in the year, but there have been some interesting things out so far, and other interesting things are on the horizon. Several strong albums have already been released despite the risk of being forgotten by yearās end, and there are singles from what may be promising albums. I also want to comment on a couple things I missed from last year.
Ā In terms of those albums — it is a strangely proggy year for me so far. I spend a lot of time complaining about modern prog and here I am ready to talk about modern prog. Go figure. And two of those albums are (at the moment) head-to-head contenders for Album of the Year. Yes it is early, and there always do seem to be surprises, so we shall see how things play out.
Ā Mariusz Duda: vocals, basses, electric and acoustic guitars
Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
MichaÅ Åapaj: keyboards and synthesizers, Rhodes piano and Hammond organ
Maciej Meller: electric guitars
Ā Tracklist
Friend or Foe?
Landmine Blast
Big Tech Brother
Post-Truth
The Place Where I Belong
Iām Done With You
Self-Aware
Ā Bonus Tracks:
Age of Anger
Together Again
Friend or Foe? (single edit)
Self-Aware (single edit)
Ā Algorithms. Influencers and Curated Lives. How to Change Your Life in Ten Words or Less. Memes. Monetization. Tracking. Filters and Avatars. Targeted Ads. Conspiracies. Expectations versus reality. Who is real and who is not? How much control over our lives do we really have?
With ID.Entity, Riversideās 8th album, Mariusz Duda and his bandmates explore these themes: negotiating virtual realities, hanging on to oneās identity and self, fighting the ubiquitous and implacable presence of the data collectors and algorithms that tell us what we should want, trying to deal with the polarization and angry echo chambers of the online world.
We get some hints from the outset that things are different: the cover is by Polish artist Jarek Kubicki and it thrums with life. This is not the dark, sombre palette of the covers of most of the previous albums. Bright, fragmented shards of colour fly out against a stark white background; we can glimpse shadowy figures in the background. Does this new vision reflect what is inside? Continue reading Riverside: ID.Entity→
Ā A few years ago, MichaÅ Åapaj, the keyboard player for the Polish band Riverside, announced that he was working on a solo album, much to the excitement of the fan base. Then followed an extended silence during which we heard almost nothing about it. Presumably the announcement was somewhat premature given the logistics of actually making an album; but finally, here it is.
Ā While we waited, Åapaj offered us some teasers: a single, and some ājam sessionsā, available on Bandcamp and his Youtube channel, showcasing his love of analogue synths and keys, and demonstrating his mastery of emotion and atmosphere. These are things that fans of Riverside already knew — Åapaj joined the band in time to appear on their second full-length album (Second Life Syndrome), and his presence provided the final element to the āRiverside soundā: the rich keyboard soundscapes and melodies that underpin all the albums. So I think it came as a bit of a surprise when the announcement of the albumās release included the information that there would be guest vocalists, and lyrics, and not just instrumental pieces.
Ā Are You There features two guest vocalists: Mick Moss, of the UK project Antimatter, and Bela KomoszyÅska, of the Polish art-rock band Sorry Boys. Artur Szolc (of the Polish collective Inspired) provides drums and percussion. There are also guitars here and there, but there is no information (that I have seen yet) about who provides them. So big question is: we know MichaÅ Åapaj can compose great sweeping ambient mood pieces, because he has demonstrated this over the years. Can he write more conventional songs?
Ā The answer is an unqualified Yes! Indeed, he can.
An ambitious project, to be sure, and there is every chance that if I look back on it, say, in three years, Iāll probably disagree with myself, but at the moment, this is my list.
Ā The albums I considered were the ones that I had already chosen in my yearly lists — most of them, anyway. Occasionally an album came along after the fact that I realized should have been included had I heard it at the right time. The chore was to figure out which of them were good enough to make The Final List. I began with about 45 albums, gleaned from my listening over the years — I had no set number I was aiming for, I just went year-by-year and chose what I considered to be the standouts from my list for that year. In the end, I narrowed it down to fifteen albums: some years were simply better for great music than others, and I see no reason to ignore that fact.
Ā Of course, there is the obvious question: What makes an album good enough to be an album of the decade?? It is a question that is harder to answer than I anticipated, since I have to have criteria that includes perhaps some … unexpected entries.
Ā It comes down to a couple of essential qualities. The first, naturally enough, is sheer staying power. It has to be an album that can stand up to repeat visits and retain the power and appeal that made it a favourite in the first place. There are lots of albums that grab me and make me play them a lot, but eventually I drift away, and whatever it was that drew me to them has gone.
Ā The best albums continue to be able to hit all those same triggers that snagged me in the first place: that ineluctable rush of joy, the goosebumpy thrill, forcing me to pay attention. They manifest the transcendence of the best music to me, whatever idiosyncratic stimuli I require in order to consider an album something of lasting value. Itās difficult to explain why I feel that particular set of responses for any record, given the variety of genres these albums represent — obviously the oriental-folk syncretism of Lunatic Soul is very different from the pounding hard-rock of Pretty Maids — but albums from both those outfits are capable of transporting me.
Ā I guess it comes down to this: whatever the music is, it must feel authentic. I am not attracted for very long to stuff that sounds forced, or derivative, or self-absorbed, or that emulates something else even with the best of intentions. The best music should feel natural, unselfconscious, emanating, as it were, from a place deep in the soul of the creators.
Ā In terms of the artists who made the cut: certainly there are The Usual Suspects, the ones I tend to find consistently satisfying, but I am always prepared to be surprised, and I surely have been over the years. There are albums on this list that literally came out of nowhere. There are candidates from bands that I have found unlistenable at times; there are albums that are not consistently great — that have a few tracks I donāt play very much — but the overall impact of the album as a whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. I hope at least you will find the list interesting.Ā Ā
Here is a rundown of the the Albums of 2019, which are so far mostly the Albums of 2018 I should have found last year. Well, I suppose better late than never and all that. Interestingly, most of these finds have popped up in my weekly Spotify Discovery list, so I must be tweaking it right. Yes, the platform comes in for a lot of grief from some of my acquaintances for its pathetically low payouts to artists, and if streaming is your primary listening source then you need a good kick in the ass. However, it has done a pretty good job at turning up music that has led me to buy albums. Some of its suggestions are entirely unexpected given that it is an algorithm, and it is nice to have an alternative source of new music, because quite honestly I think I have exhausted the musical possibilities of most of my FB friends; I can often predict whether their recommendations will work or not, and there is not a lot of convergence any more between their tastes and mine, with one or two exceptions.
As well, I will do a quick run-down of the anticipated releases for this year. If even some of these albums live up to the potential of the last ones the bands released, it could be a pretty mighty year for new music.
So … starting with what came out in 2018 that I didn’t find:
Illusion: Anhedonia
Ā Illusion is a post-punk/grunge metal quartet from GdaÅsk, Poland, founded in 1992 and with a rather on-again off-again career; Anhedonia came out early in 2018 and is their sixth album. It is a brief album, a shade over 30 minutes long. The songs are short, straight-up grunge rockers, nice and heavy but still quite melodic; these guys get right to the point without too many frills. This is not intellectual music by any means, but I find myself playing the album quite a bit. I have to say, the vocalist is excellent — some serious chops lurk beneath that gritty grunge style.
Author and Punisher: Beastland
Ā When this one turned up in my Spotify Discovery list, I was a bit surprised. I happen to love drone metal, but admittedly I donāt search it out much in Spotify and as far as I know there is none in my playlists. But for some reason, Spotify suggested a little ditty called āThe Speaker is Systematically Blownā… and, well, ābrutalā is one of the milder descriptors for what came blasting out of my headphones.
Ā Turns out that Author and Punisher is one Tristan Shone, who has been around for a while, a former mechanical engineer who has designed and made his own industrial musical āinstrumentsā; Beastland was released in October of 2018. It is hard to describe exactly what we have here, except to say … imagine what a dozen drill presses might sound like wired up to a vocoder and run through a MIDI controller, turned up to eleven. Which isnāt to say that it is just noise. Itās not: it is industrial metal, and it sounds exactly like it should — a massive wall of rhythm and melody and a LOT of weighty drone. I love it.
The Return of the InstrumentalĀ (and Poland Rising)
This was not one of my better years for musical discoveries. Ā However, the past few years have been so good that I suppose the odds were against another, and it did not arrive. Ā I only managed to come up with maybe 25 albums I wanted to listen to more than once, and some of those didnāt make it to a third play.
So: this year I have 15 albums in the list, like in other years, but Iāve decided to rank only the first five. Ā The rest are in alphabetical order. Ā Each of the final ten has its strong points, each its weaknesses, and any order I put them in would be largely arbitrary. Of the top five: I have to say only the first 2 albums are truly stellar, the third is definitely better than the rest, and 4 and 5 are strong enough to rank.Ā You will find My Best Albums of the Year below the fold.
I would be remiss if I did not point out the fact that the three best albums (to my ears) for 2018 are all from Polish outfits. Ā Iām pretty sure this is the first country sweep Iāve had.Ā See more below….
Mariusz Duda: vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, piccolo bass, banjo, guitar solo on āLamentā and āWastelandā
Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
MichaÅ Åapaj: keyboards and synthesizers, rhodes piano and hammond organ, theremin on āWastelandā
Ā Guests
Maciej Meller: guitar solo on āAcid Rain ā Part 2: Dancing Ghostsā, āGuardian Angelā, āThe Struggle for Survival Part II ā Battle Royale’ā and āRiver Down Belowā
MichaÅ Jelonek ā violin on āThe Day Afterā, āLamentā and āWastelandā
Mateusz Owczarek ā guitar solo on āVale of Tearsā
Ā Tracklist:
The Day After
Acid Rain: Part I – Where are we now?; Part II – Dancing Ghosts
Vale of Tears
Guardian Angel
Lament
Struggle for Survival: Part I – Dystopia; Part II – Battle Royale
River Down Below
Wasteland
The Night Before
Ā If you have been reading reviews for Wasteland, you already know how they tend to start, so I will not repeat all that. In summary: Wasteland is probably the most fraught album in Riversideās career, awaited with enormous anticipation, apprehension, trepidation…and so on. As fans, we all know why.
Ā The big question is: Did the decision to continue as a trio, with no permanent replacement for the beloved Piotr GrudziÅski, actually work? Did they pull it off? The responses have ranged from enthusiastic āabsolutely!ās to carefully worded versions of ānopeā, and everything in between. The only thing we knew for sure about Wasteland was that it wasnāt going to be the same as the previous albums, but Mariusz Duda always says that. I did have a hint of the sound to come, hearing something early in the spring albeit in an unfinished form, and I liked it very much; but auditory memory being what it is (bad), I wasnāt willing to bet the farm on that few minutes of a demo heard once.
Two reasons for this post:Ā 1) to make a list of the stuff that is out/will be coming out/has been rumoured might appear at some point this year; and 2) to keep the blog alive.Ā I really do need to actually write stuff for itā¦otherwise why am I dishing out $150 a year?
It might be a bit early to talk about new releases (for me; I do not accumulate new music at the pace of some others I know), but there does seem to be enough interesting stuff upcoming to make it worth taking a look to the future.Ā There is a spate of albums coming out this spring, and then we wait for the fall season.Ā If certain rumours/promises come true, it could be another epic year.
So far in 2018:
The Temperance Movement:Ā A Deeper Cut :Ā This album is seriously kicking my ass.Ā Great blues rock from England.Ā These guys are sharp and tight as hell, and clearly know what they are doing.
Dope Default: Ofrenda:Ā Loose and dirty hard/stoner rock from Greece.Ā Ofrenda is their debut album, and it sounds like a debut album, but it is certainly listenable and has some good moments.Ā They are worth keeping an eye on.
Upcoming for sure/preordered (or will be):
Riverside:Ā I have heard one track from this album, in demo form ā¦ and ohboy ohboy ohboy.Ā If the album lives up to that promiseā¦well, The Boys are Back. Fingers crossed.
Lunatic Soul: Under the Fragmented Sky (EP) ā tracks that did not make it on to Fractured but are worth a release.Ā As above ā I heard one track from this, and it revives my hopes for a return to the LS of oldāor more precisely the LS that sets hooks deep in my soul.
Solar Fields: Ourdom ā time for some classic industrial electronica.Ā I like some of his stuff more than others; I preordered the album on the basis of the youtube preview. I hope it is worth it.
Amorphis: Queen of Time.Ā One track (āThe Beeā) released so far.Ā The Finnish folk-metallers sound much more symphonic and expansive, while retaining the heaviness and their signature growl/clean vocal tradeoff.Ā Based on this track Iām not sure it will equal the last album.
Awooga: Conduit ā nice heavy metal/hard rock, they had a great EP from 2016 which I would play more often if I didnāt have to switch to 45 rpm (details details…).Ā A couple tracks already available to preview, they seem to have developed a more spacious sound.
The Fierce and the Dead: The Euphoric — I like them, but often what they do tends to get a bit too far into the technical/alt/art-rock region for me to love them.Ā But when they are good they are great, and I think the new one holds some promise. Preordered based on the released track.
Toundra: Vortex ā I have all the previous albums from these Spanish post-rockers, that I donāt play all that often…but once in a while they hit the spot. The single āCobraā sounds pretty much like Toundra, dense and heavy.
Front Line Assembly: WarMech ā new soundtrack for a new game.Ā I find myself kind of up and down about these guys, I much prefer Leebās other project Noise Unit, but on the strength of the previous game OST (AirMech, which is pretty nice) I sprang for the preorder.
VNV Nation: Noire ā Out in October, described as ādark and intenseā, first studio album since Transnational in 2013.
Leech ā The only Swiss band in my collection. It has been what ā 5 years since their last one?Ā Six?Ā Anyway, it was a pretty nice post-metal album, and the Ā only album I tried purely because of the cover.Ā Be interesting to hear what the new one will sound like.
Nordic Union: wherein Ronnie Atkins of Pretty Maids (Denmark) lends his iron pipes to the sound of the hard rock outfit Eclipse (Sweden). At this point it is just the promise of a new release, no other info.Ā But that is enough for me: hopefully it will be the same kind of straight-up kick-ass hard rock as the first one, which I love.
Rumoured for 2018:
Ā Au4: Last fall an American internet radio guy scheduled a playthrough of 2014ās ā¦And Down Goes the Sky, and had the guys live on the air to talk about it.Ā They said a new album should appear this year.Ā I surely hope soā¦if it is anything like that last one, it will be a strong contender for album of the year.
Missed from 2017:
Ā Hypergiant: Father Sky ā interesting doom/psych rock.Ā It has its moments, and the track āColossiā is truly epic, but the album might be a bit too much all at once.
Believe: VII Widows ā a band that has been around for a while, in various incarnations, guitarist Mirek Gilās vehicle since the end of Collage.Ā I am not a fan of long-winded modern prog, as many of you know, but VII Widows is surprisingly good, very nice arrangements and passages, and I must say beautiful guitar themes (Gil on here reminds me of Steve Hackett, and there is nothing wrong with that). I am not crazy about the somewhat overblown and mannered style of the vocalist, but there are few enough vocal sections that he ends up intruding less on the experience than would otherwise be the case.Ā Nice and listenable.
Decapitated: Anticult ā I confess that I checked this out mostly out of morbid curiosity; the band found itself in deep shit in late 2017 while on tour in America (i.e. they were tossed in jail in Seattle for three months; charges were all dropped).Ā Not generally being a fan of thrash metal (or so I thought), I had not paid them any attention.Ā Well, you just never know: when I listened to Anticult I found, inexplicably, that I liked it a whole lot: in fact, it would have been one of the stronger releases of last year had I found it sooner.
