Label: Insideout Records
Release date: December 10, 2020
Album length: 103.52 min
Genre: Progressive Rock
Rating: 10/10
Riverside hardly need an introduction these days. The prog rock powerhouse, well known and highly respected beyond our borders, decided at the end of last year to reissue its live document from the band’s show on October 18, 2015 in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Until this reissue, the recording was available only to members of the band’s fan club and to those who caught the band on tour and picked it up at the merch table. So, on December 11, 2020, the Tilburg show came out again via Insideout Music, making it available to every fan of this kind of music. And then some. For the first time, the concert is also out on DVD, which you can grab as a bundle with the double CD.
It’s a snapshot from the “Towards the Blue Horizon” tour, on which the band was presenting its then-current and sixth studio album overall, “Love, Fear and Time Machine” (2015, RockLine review). Over an hour and three quarters of playing time, the material is spread out fairly, with the band touching on every studio album with at least one song, and putting the emphasis on “Love, Fear and Time Machine” and “Shrine of New Generation Slaves” (2013, RockLine review).
It’s also one of the last shows by the band with original founding member Piotr Grudzinski in the lineup. He passed away a few months later from cardiac arrest. The date was February 21, 2016. Just a day earlier, the guitarist had gone to see The Winery Dogs play in Warsaw. However we look back on it, we can’t turn time backwards, and with Grudzinski’s departure, the era of classic Riverside came to a close for good. This very live document is fantastic proof of how brilliantly the Grudzinski-Duda-Kozierdski-Lapaj lineup worked together.
Grudzinski was known for the one-of-a-kind style and sound of his guitar playing. A guitarist with a truly distinctive artistic character. Riverside’s music grew with him, soaking up the musician’s eclecticism, which helped give birth to the band’s completely original artistic identity. “Lost N’ Found – Live In Tilburg 2015” is a fascinating live story that comes across flawless in performance and brilliantly captures the reach of the unique magic that the Riverside of that era could conjure. There isn’t a second or a moment on this release that needed any extra overdubs or studio cosmetics and sonic polish after the fact. The tightness, the feeling, the chemistry and the execution of the quartet run at an exceptional level the whole way through, let’s just say the highest one. The moods are intensified and grab you with full-blown pomp and theatre, through goosebump-inducing melancholy and yearning, and the creation of a magic that carries you off into a world of its own, the kind that only gets born when Riverside build it. More precisely, the kind Riverside could build with Piotr in the lineup. Riverside have always shown the power of their artistic expression as masters of crafting intense atmospheres. And then some. Through a succession of many upheavals, they amplified that magnetism and built it up over the course of any given song. The band can be exceptionally edgy and uncompromising, as hinted at in Hyperactive, or it can fascinate with softness and touching sophistication and grace, as highlighted in The Depth of Self Delusion. Above all, though, Riverside captivate in the moments where they need to show off several atmospheric characters, as in Under the Pillow. In short, it’s hard to single out highlights. Add to this whole live story the final third of the show, which includes the fascinating, 18-plus-minute Escalator Shrine EP, followed in the encore by a little treat from the debut “Out of Myself” called The Same River, and it’s clear that this live album simply has to adorn the music collection of every fan of the band.
It would have been a sin for this album, which until now was available only to fan club members and sold only on the band’s tours, to stay out of reach for the rest of the music-loving masses of the world. It rounds off an era of the band that has closed for good. Riverside were reborn after the tragedy. In a new essence and with new creativity, they keep on thrilling and delighting their followers. The excellent new album “Wasteland” (2018, RockLine review) is proof of that. So it’s clear this is a band that will deliver plenty more top-notch work in the future. But “Lost N’ Found – Live in Tilburg 2015” is the moment the comet shone with all its intensity and, in its eternal glow, stayed blazing across the endless expanses of the sky and space. This live document is your entry point for connecting with the magic of the musical universe and catching the tail of a glowing comet.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
CD 1:
01. Lost (07:56)
02. Feel Like Falling (05:36)
03. Hyperactive (05:29)
04. Conceiving You (05:04)
05. Panic Room (05:43)
06. Under The Pillow (06:48)
07. The Depth Of Self-Delusion (07:32)
08. Saturate Me (07:22)
CD 2:
01. Egoist Hedonist (07:22)
02. We Got Used To Us (05:37)
03. Escalator Shrine (20:25)
04. The Same River (13:03)
05. Found (05:48)
Lineup:
Mariusz Duda – vocals, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele
Piotr Grudzinski – guitar
Michal Lapaj – keyboards, Hammond organ
Piotr Kozieradzki – drums
