Label: Kscope Records
Release date: November 13, 2020
Production: Mariusz Duda
Album length: 39.50 min. (regular album) / 36.37 min. (bonus album)
Genre: Progressive Rock / Folk Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
The fact that Mariusz Duda, the frontman of Polish prog-rock sensation Riverside, ended up writing music for the action video game The Witcher isn’t all that surprising. And considering that both the creators of The Witcher and Mariusz come from a country that currently “stands out” for one of the most backward-looking governments in the world, it’s reassuring that Poland is home to so many extraordinary artists. All kinds of them. Highly creative souls. That goes for the world of music too.
The new Lunatic Soul album – or more precisely, the new album from Mariusz Duda’s side project, for when he’s not busy with Riverside – is an adventure through the dark expanses of dense, sprawling forests. And since this is Poland, we know we’re talking primeval woodland. Plenty of national parks, especially in the north and east of the country, are the kingdom of the żubr – the European bison – and are made up of vast, unbroken forests of giant oak trees. After six Lunatic Soul albums, Mariusz Duda decided that the seventh wouldn’t be mostly electronic, and this time he leaned on the power of traditional Slavic folk music. The kind from pagan times. From the days of the good old ancestral faith. Or, blasphemously put, “the true faith”. Not that he hadn’t drawn inspiration from there before. But this time the whole album is tribal chanting carved out of melodies that follow traditional Slavic folk tunes, with Mariusz Duda acting like a tribal shaman on the new record, walking in the footsteps of his ancestors in the dark, mysterious embrace of the forest, where fairy tales, myths, legends and mysteries reign. “Through Shaded Woods” is an album about a journey. A path to personal renewal. A path of personal purification. Through the fire of transformation. It’s an ending and a new beginning.
The Lunatic Soul project is built on a duality. It follows the cycle of dying and being born again. Mariusz Duda splits the Lunatic Soul albums along the same lines: those devoted to rebirth, which he says are dominated by electronic sounds, and those devoted to dying, whose musical substance sounds far more organic. By that measure, the new Lunatic Soul album definitely belongs with the albums about dying. The central motif of the new cover is the same as on the first two Lunatic Soul albums, only this time it’s grown together out of branches and shoots.
This time around, Mariusz Duda built his lead motifs primarily on bass guitar playing. He backed them up with simple percussion and programmed rhythms rooted in the tradition of folk polka, or close to it. These motifs will feel very familiar to fans of Celtic music, and even to the “ancient” Jethro Tull (early seventies), while also revealing, more than ever before, Mariusz Duda’s fascination with the work of Mike Oldfield. The chosen motif repeats and builds the atmosphere, constantly escalating through repetition and layer upon layer of new sonic pastels. That in turn feeds the album’s growing, predatory bombast. The sound is also pulled together with a piccolo bass guitar, and the guitar lines blend into each other too, harmonizing and intensifying the chosen motif, and through the repetitions of the tribal mantra they trigger a state of cerebral detachment. These motifs are intensified by washes of synth curtains, while the vocal melodies serve mostly as an extra instrument that sharpens the atmospheric contrasts. The vocals are often harmonized across several lines and follow simple chord progressions within the lead motifs, with everything subordinated to getting the most musical payoff possible. Verses repeat within the motif, which cements the album’s reach toward transcendence. Summoning Dance is the definitive peak of this record. It’s the most beautiful track on the album. In terms of how it combines vocal melodies and folk motifs, the gently yearning shifts of color in the soundscape, and last but not least the progressive character of its artistry. The Fountain, the closing track, breaks from the arrangement approach of the rest, as piano and synth pastels dominate the soundscape and, in a brilliantly reconciled arrangement, give Mariusz Duda’s voice an outstanding backdrop, and with a superb blend of neo-classical and folk elements the track builds to a brilliant crescendo of mystical longing for the finale.
The soundscape is singular, one of a kind and captivating. The album is easy to listen to. It feels shamanic! It works like a mantra. It’s worth surrendering to. Letting it carry you away. Switching off your logic is almost mandatory. And it can’t throw you into a depressive state, which is otherwise a trademark of the older Lunatic Soul albums.
Since more material was written once again, and since Duda knew he wouldn’t be able to use most of the leftover new material in the future, it’s included on an extra CD in the special edition of the album. So on top of the 40 minutes of music on the regular album, you get another 36 minutes. And that’s well worth sinning for too. Especially thanks to the last track, the 27-minute-plus Transition II, by far the most dynamic, exploratory and experimental in structure. Its second half in particular has more in common with the electronic nature of past Lunatic Soul albums. The bonus CD also teaches you what hylophobia is (the track Hylophobia) – the fear of forests.
“Through Shaded Woods” is even the brightest and most positively tinted Lunatic Soul album Mariusz Duda has recorded and released to date, although it still has that recognizable streak of gloom and melancholy. Interestingly, his solo album “Lockdown Sessions”, released this past June, actually has more in common with the electronic language of past Lunatic Soul albums than the current Lunatic Soul record “Through Shaded Woods” does. You’d expect a dark, depressive, distinctly sorrowful record, but the mood often speaks in a kind of solemn theater of celebration, and even awakening. Besides, “Through Shaded Woods” is positively bursting with magical mysticism, which is one of the most appealing things about it when you dive into the album’s musical substance. With this Lunatic Soul, Mariusz Duda confirms once again that when it comes to creating predatory atmosphere, hardly anyone can match him.
“Through Shaded Woods” is a singular adventure for Mariusz Duda, one in which, on his shamanic journey through dark, swampy forests and their vast expanses, he fought his way through stronger and more mature than before. Once again he has settled accounts with all the demons of the past, been reborn, cleansed and freed his fragile, feeling soul, and delivered a top-notch album, a one-of-a-kind piece of his own artistic brilliance. The change of musical direction was more than welcome, and with it Mariusz Duda managed to fully shock his audience, as well as all the devoted followers of “tribal” mantras, and pull the rug right out from under their feet.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
“Through Shaded Woods” album
1. Navvie (4:03)
2. The Passage (8:57)
3. Through Shaded Woods (5:51)
4. Oblivion (5:03)
5. Summoning Dance (9:52)
6. The Fountain (6:04)
Bonus album
1. Vyraj (5:32)
2. Hylophobia (3:20)
3. Transition II (27:45)
Musicians:
Mariusz Duda – vocals, all instruments
