Progressive Rock
Mariusz Duda, known as the bassist and singer of Riverside, has released his new album titled “AFR AI D”. It’s worth distinguishing this from his solo project called Lunatic Soul, which has a more acoustic, folk-oriented style, whereas this one, released under his own name, is almost entirely electronic and instrumental.
The first track is “Taming Nightmares”, where, after an unsettling introduction, looped keyboards and guitar carry the composition’s development — a shame about the horrendous programmed drums they chose. The main keyboard melody recalls the “human” sounds you might find on old Fairlight CMI synthesizers. And once the guitar comes in, it carries a flavour of Klaus Schulze or Jean Michel Jarre’s work.
With “Good Morning Fearmongering”, any hope of finding decent percussion vanishes entirely, and we can already see the direction this record is going to take. Vintage electronic music that fans of that style and era will find appealing. The ideas here are really the same as on the previous track, and once again they work perfectly for whatever purpose they were made.
The keyboard ostinato of “Fake Me Deep, Murf” gets an interesting keyboard melody added on top, which becomes the track’s repeated motif, with guitars thrown in and, once again, some terrifying programmed drums. Which, deep down, actually do a great job of transporting you back to the eighties, and from that angle, they’re brilliant. But it’s the rock equivalent of listening to a rockabilly record: cool, but from another era.
“Bot’s Party” is a fairly simple track — close your eyes and you can picture yourself on your living-room sofa with a 1984 E-mu Emulator, composing it in flip-flops, and that’s exactly how it comes out. It’s worth saying the guitar’s entrance is a smart move to hook you into sticking with a track that was otherwise overly trivial. The shame is it ends on a fade effect, leaving you with even more of a sense that it’s filler.
If we focus on the piano, or on the filtered, treated vocal melodies of “I Love to Chat with You”, we find a lovely, delicate track, somewhat dulled by the insistent arpeggio running through the whole piece, which, at a lower volume, could have been a curious counterpoint.
Okay, fine, I have to make the effort to understand the programmed percussion and drums, since they’re “the old-school kind”, but they’re so dominant, and on this track they’re almost the leitmotif, that all I can say is they make me want to switch albums. Because, on top of that, “Why So Serious, Cassandra” isn’t much of a composition to write home about. A few uninteresting keyboard lines, some virtual strings trying to provide a counterpoint, and an extremely dated mood.
“Mid Jorney to Freedom” is a more standard track, but again suffers from the underdeveloped four ideas it shows off, and it’s very simple in both concept and execution. Another track that only really justifies itself as a way to hit the required runtime. And sadly, more of the same on the closing track, “Embracing the Unknown”, which on top of it all lasts almost eight minutes of pure recurrence.
If you’re a fan of old-school electronic music, you might enjoy it, though there are more interesting options within this genre.
LISTEN:
https://mariuszduda.bandcamp.com/album/afr-ai-d
Writer: David Sàez