Tag Archives: Riverside

The Top Albums of 2015: Nos. 15 to 7

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The Music of 2015

2015 has been a wonderful year for new music, one of the best years in recent memory.  Almost all the new releases I checked out were worthwhile, even the ones that eventually didn’t make the cut. What’s more, most of the albums I found that had come out in previous years were also exceptional.  It is quite the opposite of last year when I had real trouble coming up with ten albums to talk about; this year the difficulty is deciding what to leave out.  That is why I have gone with a Top 15 of 2015.  Too much is just too good.

Some clear themes have emerged: this year’s music of preference seems to be either hard and heavy post-metal, post-punk, or sludge/doom metal; or beautifully sweeping songs, lush and melodic…there are few exceptions.  But pretty much all of it features lots of great powerful riffage, and real honouring of the song. Instrumental music makes up a significant portion of the albums I chose.  Established artists surprised by the shift in their direction, and new artists absolutely stomped into prominence.

This was also the year that the 1980s dominated: the influences from that decade are all over the damned place. Two bands active in the 80s that I hadn’t paid any attention to for years (or ever) blasted out of the past with monster releases. At least three other bands heavily reference 80s sounds (although technically one will not release their album until next year; at this point a single is available). Several decent live albums were released but only one snuck into the list. Live albums are generally not regarded as legitimate candidates for year-end lists, and the one that made it into mine was actually released in 2014, but fuck it, this is my list and I’ll include what I want.

So: onto the list, starting at Number 15 and working upward.

 

  1. Ghost: Meliora

Ghost are a band with a clever, well-formulated gimmick, and they are not unskilled, and Meliora is an album of nice poppy metal, nothing too straining, pleasant to listen to, but I do not understand why everyone seems to think this is a great album.  No, it is not “great”, it is well done but not exceptional by any means,  and there could be other contenders for the bottom spot that didn’t quite make it.  This is the kind of album I play when I do not want to pay too much attention to what I am listening to: it has to have some merits in terms of good song structure and decent melodies, but not too demanding of one’s attention.  Meliora fits.

 

  1. The Fierce and the Dead: Magnet

I do admire Matt Stevens; he is a dedicated guitarist and untiring in his self-promotion, which one must be in this day of DIY musicianship.  However I tend to prefer his band project, The Fierce and the Dead, over his solo efforts. Magnet is a brief EP that came out this year showcasing their eclectic style, hard-rocking somewhat freeform math/post-rock.

 

  1. Steven Wilson: Hand Cannot Erase

I write this as I am listening to Insurgentes, Wilson’s first solo album.  The differences between these two albums, the first, and his fourth, could not be more stark. Insurgentes is superb; but I find that listening to H.C.E is an exercise in sheer determination to get through it; it must be done though because it is, you know, Steven Wilson and he is god (or something).  Naturally, the album is superbly executed with exceptional performances by the musicians, beautiful melodies, and is at times almost poppy (a welcome shift away from the jazz influences of the last two albums) — and while it is clearly meant to grab at the heartstrings I find it so obviously manipulative that it just leaves me cold.  But you can read my (rather generous) review here.

Continue reading The Top Albums of 2015: Nos. 15 to 7 →

The Gigs of 2015: Part 2 (Shows 8 – 1)

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Continuing on with the Gigs of the Year…now we are into the good stuff.  I saw some great shows this year as well as some no-so-great.  The best concert of the year also turned out to be the last one I saw — I had high hopes for this gig, and the guys did not disappoint.

 

  1. Riverside (The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland)

This was the fourth of the four gigs in a row that I caught during the Love, Fear and the Time Machine tour in North America.  It was a difficult show; Duda was sick and exhausted, battling some kind of throat infection. Cleveland came the day after blowing the roof off in Chicago and Mariusz was essentially running on fumes, doing his best to not just phone it in but clearly struggling, short on energy and fighting his way through the songs.  However, towards the end he got a huge injection of energy when the crowd belted out Happy Birthday (and mangled his name; his expression was priceless).  That really seemed to make him happy and boosted the last few songs.

Cl_MD and PG

 

  1. Árstíðir (Church of St. Stephen’s-in-the-Field)

I can’t remember exactly how I came across this outfit, gentle folk rock/post-rock from Iceland; I tried a few tracks from youtube and they didn’t really grab me, far too sedate; but the idea of seeing a band like this in a church seemed like something worth checking out.  And they really were very good, very musical, personable and intimate, a beautiful setting, it was a special evening.

 

  1. Riverside (The Mod Club, Toronto)

Toronto audiences are a bit weird.  Really hipster alty and metal types, not really into prog, and I was a bit nervous about the turnout for Riverside given the size of the venue.  And the crowd was smaller than I had hoped for, a couple hundred people or so, but the show, being the first of four in a row I was to see, was a great introduction to the new material and new stage presence of Riverside.  They were much heavier on stage than the new album would have suggested, lots of energy; and it was the first time to experience the beauty of “Found” with the lights.

T_MD 5T_MD and PG 4

Continue reading The Gigs of 2015: Part 2 (Shows 8 – 1) →

Shrine of New Generation Slaves (SoNGS)

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Released January 2013 Europe; Feb. 2013 RoW

Tracklist:

  1. New Generation Slave
  2. The Depth of Self-Delusion
  3. Celebrity Touch
  4. We Got Used to Us
  5. Feel Like Falling
  6. Deprived (Irretrievably Lost Imagination)
  7. Escalator Shrine
  8. Coda

Bonus Disc:

  1. Night Session Part 1
  2. Night Session Part II

Confession time…and some context. I will say right off the bat: I struggled mightily to review this album when it first came out.  I made a few attempts, and even posted some, but frankly none of them ended up worth the time it took to launch Word.  It pains me to say that they were pretty much the sort of hagiographic piles of adulatory crap I deplore reading from others, and deep down, even at the time I wrote them, I knew it.  But I chose to ignore my gut.

What I think happened was this: Shrine of New Generation Slaves was the first album that Riverside released after I discovered them and became a fan, and I had just spent most of the preceding year immersed in the band’s (and Lunatic Soul’s) discography, listening to almost nothing else, stunned and exhilarated by the discovery of music I had been waiting for all my life.  Naturally I had a huge emotional stake in the new material.

When the special blue vinyl pre-order arrived (the first of the several versions to hit my doorstep) and the playing began…well, things started to go south from there.  My immediate reaction was: This is not the album I have been waiting for.  But because at some level it had to be that album, and the accolades began pouring in from all directions…I suppressed my instincts and spent the next year trying to talk myself into loving it. Even the video accompanying the first single, “Celebrity Touch”, didn’t dismay me as much as it should have.

…But now a couple of years have passed, and I hope I am far enough distanced to deal with SoNGS fairly. The truth is, I don’t love the album, and that is tough to admit.  So let’s get this party started.

Continue reading Shrine of New Generation Slaves (SoNGS) →

Memories in my Head (EP)

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Released June 2011

Tracklist:

  1. Goodbye Sweet Innocence
  2. Living in the Past
  3. Forgotten Land

After the release of Anno Domini High Definition, four long years passed before the fifth full-length album appeared in 2013. However, the guys were not idle: Mariusz Duda released two albums for his Lunatic Soul solo project:  Lunatic Soul II in 2010, and Impressions in 2011, and the band continued to work on new material.

As it turned out, 2011 marked the 10th year of the band’s existence, and the Memories in My Head EP became part of the celebration of their first decade.  It certainly seemed as though the band had reached a high water mark: Their label in Poland, Mystic Productions, released the 6-cd Reality Dream box set (combining the first three albums with additional material), and Inside Out released several limited edition coloured vinyl versions of their first four albums.  The band then embarked on a “Jubilee Year” tour of Europe, which culminated with the release of this EP; they also began talk of a new album.

“When something ends, something else begins/We are moving on”. 

Memories in My Head was intended as a farewell nod to the foundational Riverside sound of the Trilogy years (and perhaps to placate the fans impatient for a new album): as ADHD (and subsequent albums) demonstrated, the musical intentions and direction and of the band had shifted, and would continue to do so.  Still, the EP may well be one of the band’s most beloved releases, and it is not hard to see (or indeed hear…) why.  MiMH truly is a magnificent little album, a consummate distillation of everything that made the Riverside sound unique, an almost perfect summing up of ten years of musical and lyric artistry, inspiration and influences, writing and touring.

Clocking in at a shade under 33 minutes (and by now the numbers game should need no explanation), the three glorious tracks merge seamlessly into each other, creating a musical flow that makes the EP feel almost like one long, magnificent song.  Driven by Piotr Grudziński’s hallmark melodic winding guitar themes, and Mariusz Duda’s powerful leading bass and fine vocals, it is packed with musical metaphors and classic Riverside tropes and themes, lushly atmospheric, full of the vast, cinematic soundscape that is so fundamental to their sound.  Lyrically Duda is very much on the ball; there is some excellent word-smithing here, at least on the first two tracks, evoking both nostalgia for the past and hope for the future.  “Forgotten Land” does break the continuity in that regard, being one of the very few songs he has written (for any of his projects) that is not from an intimate first or second-person perspective.  However, the track was used in a trailer for The Witcher 2 video game, so it works in that respect.

Memories in My Head looks back to the more expansive, more progressive, much-beloved sound of the band’s origins, and winds up that era of the band’s history in an almost perfect fashion.  There could hardly be a better way to commemorate their first ten years.

Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD)

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Released: June  2009 (Poland); July 2009 (Europe and RoW)

Tracklist

  1. Hyperactive
  2. Driven to Destruction
  3. Egoist Hedonist
  4. Left Out
  5. Hybrid Times

And then there were four….

Mariusz Duda, when interviewed, often likes to draw attention to a couple of things: that Riverside has a recognizably distinctive sound, and the band does not like to remain stylistically static.  These facts are abundantly clear nowadays, but I warrant that even after three albums, the second point was not so obvious. The Trilogy introduced an unmistakable Riverside-ish musical Gestalt, one that essentially defined them and even though there were some differences from album to album (especially in regard to how heavy they became), there really was a unity of sound that likely has helped pigeonhole them in the “progressive” category from which it is proving difficult for the guys to extract themselves (in fact, anyone who has paid any attention at all to interviews and comments over the past couple of years will realize that being styled “progressive metal” is somewhat of a Duda bugbear).

Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD), their fourth album (with its four-word title and double-entendre acronym) was the first album where this desire for stylistic change became undeniably manifest.  And what a change it was.  It must have seemed as if they were not just abandoning their lush progressive roots, but dropkicking them into the next solar system.  The guys took their sumptuous atmospheric sound and slammed it head on into a heavy metal wall; they embraced it so enthusiastically one might even suspect they were eager for a change.  The keyboard sound acquired a much harder edge.  The guitars are dense and raunchy and full of relentless energy, the bass punchy and riff-heavy, taking the lead like it had never done before. Piotr Kozieradzki must have been in drum heaven on this one, with his extensive death metal background.  No acoustic guitar, no ballads, no real soft pieces except the start of “Left Out”.  For all that, Duda’s first point stands: There is no doubt we are listening to Riverside—their distinctive core remains untouched.

Continue reading Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD) →

Interlude: Reality Dream Live

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Released:

  • 2008 on cd and vinyl
  • 2009/2010 on DVD
  • 2011 in the Big Box Set (6-cd compilation)

Live tracks recorded and filmed during a concert played in Łódź, Poland on May 17th 2008.

The reviews of the three studio albums that make up the Reality Dream Trilogy are posted, so it seems like a sensible spot to put a brief précis of the only live concert video Riverside have managed to bring to fruition thus far, a live set of tracks and a DVD stitched together from songs from those albums. If they played anything from Voices in My Head or new songs during this show, it does not appear here.

As of this writing, apart from some videos on the band’s and the label’s Youtube channels, the Reality Dream DVD is the only official record of the band’s on-stage presence—at least as it was at one point in their career.  It provides a touchstone for comparisons to their recent performances, especially if one refers to the documentary “In Between” that accompanied the last Lunatic Soul album wherein Mariusz Duda briefly discusses the changes made by the band in how they approach their live shows.  Duda is indeed much more of a physical presence on stage now than he was in the early days, and Michał Łapaj is much less restrained…but otherwise there isn’t a lot of difference.  They were and are superbly rehearsed, almost preternaturally in touch with each other as performers, and while audience participation is more actively encouraged in recent years the band seems to play more to each other than they do directly to the audience.

In terms of production it is a good record of a live performance, fairly straightforwardly shot but alas edited as if someone had spent too much time watching Porcupine Tree’s Arriving Somewhere DVD, chock full of faux scratches and fading colour and the flare of decaying film, with aspect ratios flipping back and forth at random.  All of that distracts more than it enhances.   Just give us the show.   The songs are almost perfectly rendered versions of the studio tracks with some minor concessions to the live context.  This perhaps is the biggest contrast with the current approach: today many of the songs have been modified and transformed into unique and in some cases superior versions for live performance.

There are four versions of this show, in different formats, and each with slightly different track orders. At the moment the availability of the different releases varies from “You Can Find It If You Dig” (the DVD mostly) to “Yeah Right, Dream On”.  Set lists for the different versions continue  below the fold.

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Rapid Eye Movement

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Released: September 2007 (Europe); October 2007 (North America)

(The band lineup has remained stable since Voices in My Head; if anything changes, relevant reviews will note it)

Tracklist:

  1. Beyond the Eyelids
  2. Rainbow Box
  3. 02 Panic Room
  4. Schizophrenic Prayer
  5. Parasomnia
  6. Through the Other Side
  7. Embryonic
  8. Cybernetic Pillow
  9. Ultimate Trip

Bonus Disc Tracklist:

  1. Behind the Eyelids
  2. Lucid Dream IV
  3. 02 Panic Room (remix)
  4. Back to the River
  5. Rapid Eye Movement

And then there were three.

The release of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) wound up the Reality Dream Trilogy, the first three albums united by their ambitious and lushly intricate musicality, and their common lyric arc of self-exploration and change.  As it turned out, REM also marked the end of the first phase in the band’s ongoing quest to explore new musical directions and keep themselves sounding fresh, but this wouldn’t become clear until album number 4.

I find this a difficult album to review.  I like it, of course, I like all the Riverside albums, and I would rather play REM than many other albums in my collection, but I rarely feel the urge to play it in its entirety.  It is an album that seems “stuck between”, as it were, in a kind of limbo between potential and success, as if something intangible is missing.  In other words, it is not immediately obvious why REM should not be a well-played album.  I don’t have an easy explanation for why it niggles at me.

At any rate, I suspect that if anyone is going to bother to disagree with any of my Riverside reviews, it will be with REM. I know a lot of people connect with it, but I seem unable to do so. I think my issues with the album boil down to this: the largely hit-and-miss nature of both the songs and the lyrics.

The lyrics of REM appear to be themed around psychological aspects of duality and opposition: sides of our personalities that often are in conflict.  Sleeping, dreaming, and the liminal state between sleep and wakefulness are some key metaphors that drive this theme.  And I have to confess that these ideas are cleverly handled: hooky imagery abounds, sly cultural references, and plenty of deft turns of phrase—and yet, there is just something missing.

Continue reading Rapid Eye Movement →

Second Life Syndrome

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Released October 31, 2005

Personnel:

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

Tracklist

  1. After
  2. Volte Face
  3. Conceiving You
  4. Second Life Syndrome
  5. Artificial Smile
  6. I Turned You Down
  7. Reality Dream III
  8. Dance With the Shadows
  9. Before

This is probably the first Riverside album I heard all the way through.  I do know that the very first song I ever heard by them came from this album, and quite by accident.  I think we all pile up those free cds that come with each issue of Prog Mag, and (confession time) I pretty much never get around to playing them.  This time though the cd was a “history of prog ” compilation, so I gave it a shot.

Insert cd…<stuff plays> Yeah this old stuff is good…what about this new prog? <listens> Meh; okay; meh; meh; meh…<”Conceiving You”>  Oh wow who the hell are these  guys?  <jawdrop> And who the fuck is that singer???

I sure found out, because my immediate and subsequent digging around on Youtube for Riverside inevitably turned up Lunatic Soul, and that was the music…but anyway, that’s a different set of reviews. As it was (and I discovered them late: they were a year away from releasing their fifth album) I spent the next six months listening to almost nothing else but the Riverside and Lunatic Soul back catalogues.

Second Life Syndrome is the album where Riverside became complete, as it were, and its release must have quelled the apprehension of many fans eagerly awaiting the follow-up to Out of Myself: were these guys really going to be able to fulfill the enormous promise of that first album?

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Voices in My Head

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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.

Out of Myself

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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 →