Mariusz Duda has become a household name in progressive music circles over the last 15-20 years. Riverside has become one of the premier progressive rock bands. But there is another side to Mariusz that, while gaining a following, has never quite gotten the accolades it deserves. That would be Lunatic Soul. The eighth album in this interconnected story releases on October 31st through Inside Out Music, and it is called The World Under Unsun.
Mariusz started this journey back in 2008, and every release since then has been golden. My personal favorite is 2010’s Lunatic Soul II, “the white album”, as some call it, but that’s basically splitting hairs. All of them are fantastic, and they feature a surprising range of sounds and styles. The lineup for the new one includes Mariusz on vocals, bass, piccolo bass, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboards, percussion, and programming, with Wawrzyniec Drumowicz on drums, Marcin Odyniec on saxophone, and Mateusz Owczarek on soundscapes.
Lunatic Soul offers music that is somewhat difficult to describe in terms of genre. There are elements of progressive rock, but next to no electric guitar is ever used. There are gothic, folk, electronic, cinematic, and singer-songwriter elements, some stronger than others depending on the album, but they don’t define the sound. Fans of Dead Can Dance will be right at home.
Lunatic Soul is more about ambience, atmosphere, abstraction, and ambivalence. The story is a mysterious journey into the afterlife, purposefully vague and greyed in mist, emotional and wondrous, but also dark and brooding. The World Under Unsun leans into the rhythmic, spiraling sounds of 2020’s Through Shades Woods, where long passages of layered melodies and rhythms meet and swirl around each other. The immediate sound, though, reminds me of the electronica of 2017’s Fractured combined with the progressive rock leanings of 2014’s Walking on a Flashlight Beam. You will hear the entire breadth of the Lunatic Soul sound on this album, however.
Before I address the tracks, there are a couple things to say. First, this is a double album. Mariusz set out to make it so from the beginning. It is about 1.5 hours long and contains fourteen tracks. That is quite a bit of music to process, so give it time. You know my feelings on double albums: I find that they are typically filler with strong tracks dispersed throughout the runtime. There are exceptions, though, and I will say that this album doesn’t feel as long as it is. I’ll also be honest and say that it could have been shorter.
Another thing I should say is that Mariusz continues to prove that he is one of the best bassists out there today. His riffing, grooving style is on full display again, and it is absolutely astonishing. But his musicianship across all of the instruments is frankly amazing, and that specifically applies to the piano, as Mariusz plays it with sparkling grace.
I told myself I wouldn’t mention every track, but I think I will after all. I’ll talk about them in halves though, as the album is structured that way by default. In the first half, you’ll find two of the singles, the title track and “The Prophecy”. I love both of these songs, the latter especially even though it is one of the most repetitive songs I think Mariusz has ever made, but I can’t help but listen to it constantly. You’ll find more complex songs, like the early LS sounds in “Loop of Fate”, just with more fire and sax; the gritty “Monsters”, full of burning bass and fantastic vocals; and the twelve-minute “Mind Obscured, Heart Eclipsed”, a truly spellbinding trip through abstraction, serenity, and atmosphere. You’ll also hear a couple ballads, the gentle “Good Memories Don’t Want to Die”, which is one of my favorites, and “Torn in Two”, gorgeous and memorable in its own right.
Mariusz does a great job of pacing this album, dispersing longer tracks between shorter ones, and putting contrasts together, like the fiery “Monsters” followed by the purity of “The Prophecy”. It keeps you on your toes and thus the burnout on double albums doesn’t happen here.
The second half begins with a favorite, “Hands Made of Lead”; I love the candid vocals, the emotional horizons built right into the melodies, and the pealing saxophone. It is one of three longish tracks, the others being “Game Called Life”, with its electronic character and mournful mood, and “Self in Distorted Glass”, a lumbering and percussion-heavy piece that feels quite cinematic—I love how it smooths out into piano and watery noises that remind me of the Impressions album.
Some of my favorites still remain, though. The other tracks in the half are “Ardour”, a rhythmic piece that reminds me of Through Shaded Woods, “Confession”, another favorite that isn’t quite a ballad, but it is reserved and full of potent melodic layers, “Parallels”, pure abstraction and ambience, and the closing single, “The New End”, which is deeply beautiful, and I find myself singing it constantly.
Mariusz took on the huge task of making a solo double album, and The World Under Unsun is a success. He visits sounds from each LS album, bringing them together into a seamless and rich experience. As always, though, the anchors are his crystal clear voice, his trusty bass, and the spectral soul he expresses. Again, though, it takes some time to process, and I myself will be processing it for months, I think. Give it the time and space it needs.
______________
Find Lunatic Soul online:
______________
______________
The PROG Mind 