Riverside + Lesoir
Organised by: Madness Live
Venue: Razzmatazz 2
Photography: Jordi Amela (@amela_photo_concert)
Writer: Carles Pinós
RIVERSIDE CONFIRM THEIR RISE INTO THE BIG LEAGUES
On Sunday 8 October we attended a concert by Polish band Riverside at Sala Razzmatazz 2, with Lesoir as support, making for an interesting bill within the modern Progressive Rock scene.
Lesoir were the band tasked with opening the show, warming up an already very willing crowd. The Dutch band, founded in 2009 by Maartje Meessen, draw, as their own members acknowledge, on influences from acts like Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree and Gazpacho. With their prog-pop sound, the band played pieces from their regular repertoire such as “Mosaic” and “Somebody Like You”, and also gave us an early taste of their upcoming album with the track “Push Back”. The band, who keep a carefully considered look and a varied instrumentation (2 guitars, flute, keys, bass, drums and vocals), had a lot of trouble with the venue’s sound. Throughout the set the bass stayed completely masked, with a very poorly defined tone. The solo passages on flute, guitar and, especially, keys were barely audible either. Despite these problems, the band closed out their set notably well with “The Drawer” and “Two Faces”.
Lesoir
Riverside
After the customary stage change, at 8:30pm sharp the Polish band Riverside‘s set begins with a very Pink Floyd-ish opening, during which the band’s four members come out onto the stage one by one: Piotr Kozieradzki (drums), Maciej Meller (guitar), Michał Łapaj (keys) and Mariusz Duda (bass and vocals). This opening warms up the atmosphere and flows straight into “#Addicted”. With the crowd fully won over, Riverside continue with Panic Room and one of the standout tracks from their latest album, Landmine Blast, which shows off the band’s great strengths — a powerful, well-defined bass tone guiding the rest of the band, seasoned with an imaginative Mini Moog solo to close it out. The next track, “Big Tech Brother”, confirms just how right it was to bring Michał Łapaj into the band, who dressed up the track with warm Hammond tones.
The concert continued very fluidly, with the quartet running through tracks from their long career — songs like “Post-Truth”, “The Place Where I Belong” and “We Got Used to Us” sent those present wild. The set list closed with the inevitable “Friend or Foe”, evoking the synth-pop side of the 1980s. As an encore, the band treated the crowd to “Self-Aware”, notable for an opening that recalls the mighty Deep Purple and their searing Hammond organ, and “Conceiving You”, a track during which the band interacted with the crowd to bid a magnificent farewell to the Barcelona audience.
All in all, this concert confirmed the band’s rise, in sound, staging and audience alike. Riverside have managed to establish themselves in the big leagues, going from the modest band that played back in 2006 to a group led by a deeply charismatic frontman who has reached the status of a major act within today’s rock scene, drawing in new fans at this latest Barcelona show — one Riverside themselves have called their best concert yet.