Tag Archives: Riverside

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 →

Gigs of 2024

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It seems ironic to have a section on concerts, because I went to so few of them. For the second year in a row I managed to attend a mere half-dozen shows. I think my gig-going days are winding down: the physical toll is getting greater, and the cost…!  Sure I love to support the bands but we are ticket-fee’d to death before we even get in the door, and then the merch cost….  As much as I regret not doing it, I haven’t bought a shirt for over a year. But that’s an old story and I can’t see it changing any time soon. 

These days there has to be a really good reason for me to hit the venues, and frankly there are fewer and fewer bands coming this way that I really want to see (most of those are small-to-medium European acts and are unlikely to be able to afford to tour over here). 

The shows I did see were scattered throughout the year: Earthside opening for Caligula’s Horse in February; Ministry/Gary Newman/Front Line Assembly in March; VNV Nation in April, Riverside in June; Billy Idol in August; and Zeal and Ardor in November. I’ll start in third place and work towards the top.

  1. Riverside Live at Torwar Arena. June 1, Warsaw.

This show was the grand finale to a huge (year-and-a half, all told), and hugely successful world tour in support of the band’s 8th album, ID.Entity, released in January of 2023. We can acknowledge the somewhat divided opinions about the album within the more established Riverside fan base, but I do believe it gained them more new fans, especially overseas, than any of the other albums. The gig was planned for June 1, to be recorded as an official live release, and in a bigger venue than they had heretofore played anywhere outside of festivals. They were going to go out with a bang, figuratively and (given the confetti cannons) literally, not to mention the massive laser-heavy light show. There was no way I was going to miss this gig: these are my boys, after all, and I love them dearly. 

I had a marvelous time. It was reminiscent of the February 2017 shows when Riverside returned from their year’s hiatus after the death of Piotr Grudziński, and the fans came together in remembrance and celebration. Everyone was there, from all over Poland, Europe, the UK, and farther afield. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the Riverside Family, most of whom I had not seen since 2017, and a bunch I had never met before. It was a concert meet-up at its best.

Given all that, why is it Number 3?

Unfortunately, despite the elaborate hype and promotion and all the initial excitement, the show itself struck me as somewhat flat. It felt over-rehearsed and suffering from a lack of spontaneity that the guys didn’t seem able to overcome. I had certainly seen the band put on better, more dynamic shows: the incandescent gig in Chicago in 2015; the monstrous show in Warsaw in October 2018 to start off the Wasteland tour; the Montreal gigs in both 2022 and 2023. All of those were Riverside at their energetic best, truly the live band Mariusz Duda insists they are. June 1 in Torwar was not one of those shows, which is why I never said much about it at the time or afterwards.  

 

  1. Zeal and Ardor. Opera House, November 28th.

I didn’t know a whole lot about these guys except that they were out of Switzerland, and had some interesting-sounding songs: metal, but on a foundation of southern spirituals and slave protest songs. I liked what I’d heard of their latest album, but hadn’t played it a lot–in fact, I don’t think I had played it all the way through when I bought a ticket on a whim. I had no other gigs planned for the near future, and they sounded intriguing enough to take a chance on.

I am very glad I did so. It’s a big band, with six guys on stage. Along with the regular metal-band two guitars/bass/drums lineup, there are two guys who are straight vocalists, along with the lead singer/guitarist. The music has a great emphasis on intricate vocals, strong harmonies, and call-and-response amongst the growls (it is, after all, a metal band). And as heavy as they occasionally get on the album, they ramped it to a whole new level live: intensely powerful and raw, much more than the studio stuff would lead you to expect. Dynamic, energetic, and yet in between songs the leader, Manuel Gagneux, is funny and personable, and unexpectedly American (given his name and where the band hails from I guess I was expecting to hear at least a French accent). They did not play a long set which was a bit disappointing but it was thoroughly immersive and I’d go see them again in a heartbeat.

 

  1. Front Line Assembly/Gary Numan/Ministry. History, March 16th.

Sometimes, you see the lineup for a tour, and the information is hard to process. Is this really a thing, or is it someone’s fantasy show and I’m just looking at a meme? These three acts  all on one bill, every one of them a headliner, an industrial lineup of such legendary proportions–it hardly seemed possible. And yet there we were.

 They were on the second leg of this tour by the time March 2024 rolled around, having taken it across the US first. I knew FLA and was a huge fan of Noise Unit, one of Bill Leeb’s other projects. I had seen Numan three times before on his own tours, but had never managed to catch Ministry. There was no possible way I was going to miss this show, even if it killed me, and given it was General Admission and standing, it just might. It was at a venue I didn’t know (the relatively new History), and it was gonna be packed because it had sold out almost instantly. 

I got there early enough to be pretty close to the front, if not right on the rail, and the crowd was electric with excitement. And this show did not disappoint: crazy and intense and over the top, a crowd almost overwhelmed with joy and energy; even the security was good-natured, handing out water bottles as the heat and excitement grew, manipulating surfers over the rail, keeping an eye. I’ll give the venue kudos for that (it is a pretty nice place, actually). The individual sets must have been shortened but they didn’t feel that way–we certainly got our money’s worth from everyone. The show lived up to every expectation and then some. Gigs like this don’t come along too damned often.

Exciting News!! Something Big!!

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Do I have your attention? 😃

What’s Going On?

The past few months have been very slow on my blog–not, probably, that anyone has noticed, but still…I’ve let it slide. I have not been talking much about new music, because I haven’t been listening much to new music, and there is a reason for that: something else has taken precedence.

 Here’s a bit of context:

A few years ago (well, more than a few, but let’s not talk about how quickly time is passing…), I started a series of posts in which I ranked and reviewed all of Riverside’s studio albums and EPs. I meant to do the same thing for Lunatic Soul but somehow it didn’t 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 project’s 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: “You know what I think? One day you should write a book. About Riv/LS, maybe MD stuff. I can help you.”

Continue reading Exciting News!! Something Big!! →

Album Reviews: The Music of 2023

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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 I’ve 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 year’s list that are unlikely to be long-term players, but that do have some good songs, so hopefully I will continue to sample them. 

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 can’t 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. 

In terms of the ranking… I’ve put numbers on them but except for the three or four at the bottom, those numbers don’t mean very much. It’s crowded at the top. There are some clear distinctions among some albums, but there are also places where making a choice is largely arbitrary. 

Let’s go.

Continue reading Album Reviews: The Music of 2023 →

The Music So Far: March 2023 Update

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Generally I don’t 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 year’s 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.

 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.

Continue reading The Music So Far: March 2023 Update →

Riverside: ID.Entity

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Released: January 20, 2023

 Personnel

  •  Mariusz Duda: vocals, basses, electric and acoustic guitars
  • Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
  • Michał Łapaj: keyboards and synthesizers, Rhodes piano and Hammond organ
  • Maciej Meller: electric guitars

 Tracklist

  1. Friend or Foe?
  2. Landmine Blast
  3. Big Tech Brother
  4. Post-Truth
  5. The Place Where I Belong
  6. I’m Done With You
  7. Self-Aware

 Bonus Tracks:

  1. Age of Anger
  2. Together Again
  3. Friend or Foe? (single edit)
  4. Self-Aware (single edit)

 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, Riverside’s 8th album, Mariusz Duda and his bandmates explore these themes: negotiating virtual realities, hanging on to one’s 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 →

Album Review: Are You There by Michał Łapaj

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Released: July 2021

 Personnel:

  • Michał Łapaj: keyboards
  • Mick Moss: vocals (tracks 2, 3)
  • Bela Komoszyńska: vocals (tracks 4, 6)
  • Artur Szolc: drums

 Tracklist:

  1. Pieces
  2. Flying Blind
  3. Shattered Memories
  4. Shelter
  5. Where Do We Run
  6. Fleeting Skies
  7. In Limbo
  8. Unspoken
  9. Surfacing
  10. From Within

 A few years ago, Michał Łapaj, 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.

 While we waited, Łapaj offered us some teasers: a single, and some “jam sessions”, 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 — Łapaj 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 “Riverside sound”: 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 album’s release included the information that there would be guest vocalists, and lyrics, and not just instrumental pieces.

 Are You There features two guest vocalists: Mick Moss, of the UK project Antimatter, and Bela Komoszyńska, 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 Michał Łapaj can compose great sweeping ambient mood pieces, because he has demonstrated this over the years. Can he write more conventional songs?

 The answer is an unqualified Yes! Indeed, he can.

Continue reading Album Review: Are You There by Michał Łapaj →

Albums of the Decade: 2010 to 2019

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An ambitious project, to be sure, and there is every chance that if I look back on it, say, in three years, I’ll probably disagree with myself, but at the moment, this is my list.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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. It’s 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.

 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.

 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 don’t 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.  

Continue reading Albums of the Decade: 2010 to 2019 →

The Music of 2019, such as it is.

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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

 Illusion is a post-punk/grunge metal quartet from Gdańsk, 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

 When this one turned up in my Spotify Discovery list, I was a bit surprised. I happen to love drone metal, but admittedly I don’t 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 “The Speaker is Systematically Blown”… and, well, “brutal” is one of the milder descriptors for what came blasting out of my headphones.

 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 “instruments”; 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 isn’t to say that it is just noise. It’s 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.

Continue reading The Music of 2019, such as it is. →

The Music of 2018: Albums, Songs, and Summary.

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The Return of the Instrumental (and Poland Rising)

This was not one of my better years for musical discoveries.  However, the past few years have been so good that I suppose the odds were against another, and it did not arrive.  I only managed to come up with maybe 25 albums I wanted to listen to more than once, and some of those didn’t make it to a third play.

So: this year I have 15 albums in the list, like in other years, but I’ve decided to rank only the first five.  The rest are in alphabetical order.  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.  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.  I’m pretty sure this is the first country sweep I’ve had.  See more below….

Continue reading The Music of 2018: Albums, Songs, and Summary. →