Mariusz Duda grins ruefully over a video call from his Warsaw studio as he explains the series of creative diversions he’s made over the past four and a half years from the band he made his name with. “Maybe I should admit: I was tired of Riverside’s music. I was tired of this formula. I was tired of being in this kind of rock band.”
Enter stage left something of a blessing in disguise, for him anyway: a global pandemic.
“When lockdown happened, I was grateful, I was happy,” he says. “It meant I could stay home, simply stop touring and be with my family. And then I also had the chance to finish the most recent Lunatic Soul record and focus on different projects – something very different from Riverside.”
He’s not kidding. After Lunatic Soul’s Nordic noir moods and acoustic folk textures were brought to bear on 2020’s Through Shaded Woods, Duda turned out a quick-fire triptych of solo LPs (plus an EP last year) over 2020 and 2021, which blended techno beats with piano melodies and ambient soundscapes.
“I always wanted to experiment a bit with electronic
