After releasing four solo albums under his own name, Riverside frontman Mariusz Duda has turned his attention back to Lunatic Soul. He’s rightly proud of The World Under Unsun, an ambitious double-length release that he refers to as his “calling card.” But could it spell the end of this particular outlet?
Mariusz Duda has reached 50 years old; and understandably, he’s in a reflective mood as he celebrated the milestone with some pamper time at a health farm. “My wife took me to the spa... yay,” he deadpans. “Yesterday I had a Thai massage, which means that all the parts of my body are in pain. This is the kind of place where mainly German people over 70 go, so I’m probably preparing for my future years.”
Duda deserves to celebrate another landmark, too. Lunatic Soul – which has run alongside his leadership of prog giants Riverside for 17 years – has reached a conclusion of sorts. The World Under Unsun, draws his self-mythologising circle of life and death to a close.
“This is my 20th album, including eight with Riverside, eight with Lunatic Soul and four electronic releases under my own name,” he says. “So that’s the threshold already. I guess that’s why the lyrics on The World Under Unsun are about changing, about abandoning something from the past and moving forwards.”
A moment of existential doubt seems to take him: “I feel that I have to change something – but how many years do I have left? Maybe two decades, tops! I’m not as healthy as Paul McCartney and Roger Waters, who are still full of fire at the age of 80-something. I don’t know if I will be as healthy at that age, but I definitely want to take care of my future with less stress.”
Can we expect more Lunatic Soul, then? “That’s a good question,” he replies. He’s still mulling it over; but the extensive and serialised way he’s told this story is very much over, he confirms.
Lunatic Soul have always been the mysterious younger sibling of Riverside. Founded as a therapeutic outlet for his creative yearnings, he’s always refuted any talk of it being a side-project. Aside from the drummer, Wawrzyniec Dramowicz, and the occasional guest musician, he plays all the instruments himself, saying, “I’m not being arrogant, but a solo project should surely be solo, like Prince or Mike Oldfield.”
It’d be fair to say the Lunatic Soul albums have covered more ground than Riverside, genre-wise, from the electronic-focused eponymous debut in 2008 to the folk-oriented Through Shaded Woods of 2020. The World Under Unsun weighs in at a hefty 90 minutes – a big beast that he’s nicknamed ‘The Best Of Mariusz Duda.’
“I believe this album shows the best range of my inspirations,” he says. “From the very beginning I decided to add progressive rock, folk, electronicand oriental folky elements. I realised that doing a 45-minute album would be too intense and too diverse.”
He has a point: Hands Made Of Lead is a prog odyssey with a spoken-word introduction; Mind Obscured, Heart Eclipsed begins with droney analogue keyboards before it’s hijacked by some invasive bottom-end slap played on a piccolo bass; The Prophecy is initially a dark torch song that grows into a kind of progressive pop redolent of Tears For Fears. And so on. “So that’s why I decided to extend it to a double album,” he continues. “There’s more space for the changing moods.”
Naturally, it bucks the current trend of diminishing the album in favour of single tracks assembled on a digital playlist. “I haven’t created the album for everyone,” he says defiantly. “Lunatic Soul is for the people who adore listening to an album from the very beginning to the end. It’s my way of giving the finger to those who say it shouldn’t be more than 40 minutes, just because people don’t have time to listen to albums any more. My music is aimed at an audience that’s trying to heal, and trying to live with this music in a meditative way. I do that from time to time myself; I find it very healthy.”
These days, Duda tries to make time to listen to a chosen album each day with his eyes closed, and read for an hour too, in order to reawaken some of the passion he had for books and tapes as a teenager. It’s a routine he struggles to maintain given the pressures of the attention economy. If music is his therapy, has he ever considered doing some actual therapy?
“Do you mean like going to a psychiatrist?” he asks. “The thing is, I was diagnosed with ADHD and depression, but I didn’t want to take a pill – mostly because I was afraid that I’d have a problem with composing and creating. That’s why I always try to find my recovery by doing music. And that’s why I suffer when I’m on tour; it’s because I can’t create. I don’t know how those bands in the 70s did it. Recording one or two albums a year while being on the road all the time... that’s insane!”
It’s a dark story about fighting with demons, depression and the issues that we have. But it’s really hard to not connect it with what’s going on right now
The World Under Unsun deals with the mental health of the central protagonist, who manifests Duda’s inner turmoil across a range of adventures. He surmises that it’s 50% real and 50% fantasy. The albums aren’t necessarily sequential or linear either – a storytelling device he likens to the work of filmmakers Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan. He says he might turn Lunatic Soul into a novel or novels in the future, though it’s not under consideration at the moment.
So what is an unsun? Duda likens it to a solar eclipse, one that engenders a state of emotional stasis. There’s a liminal tension throughout the record’s 90 minutes; if it’s painful, then there’s hope too; and the promise of release is never too far away. Eclipses were once thought to be harbingers of doom, with accounts of medieval crowds beating pots and pans to try to scare away the monster eating the sun. There’s a track called Monster; Prog wonders if these concepts are connected? And is this monster synonymous with the political climate of 2025?
“I write lyrics that leave you space for your own interpretations,” says Duda. “If it suits you in terms of political stuff, sure, why not? We live in that kind of world right now; that has to be related. But the whole of Lunatic Soul is more like an inner journey – I always try to focus on the personal issues of the hero. It’s a dark story about fighting with demons, depression and the issues that we have. But it’s really hard to not connect it with what’s going on right now.”
He says of the new album’s narrative: “It’s about leaving some patterns behind; about breaking the cycle you’ve been in for a long, long time. It’s also about abandoning toxic relationships. Everyone knows that feeling of being stuck somewhere – we’d like to go away but we can’t. So this album is for those kinds of people as a kind of inspiration. If you want to change something in your life, The World Under Unsun is for you!”
Duda’s personal annus horribilis was 2016, when he lost both his father and his Riverside bandmate Piotr Grudzinski, who died aged just 40. Riverside’s 2018 album, Wasteland understandably responded to these difficult life events. During the pandemic, Lunatic Soul released Through Shaded Woods, a folk-influenced album from Duda’s “death cycle” that seemed to be more a celebration of life. Then came three improvised electronic albums released in quick succession under the banner The Lockdown Trilogy (which could only be bought on tape or through Bandcamp). Changes are clearly afoot with Duda, though where he goes next he’s yet to decide.
I’ve lived the same amount of time in Warsaw as I did in my hometown. Maybe I’ll stay another 10 years and then move back to my roots
“I’m really happy that I could release the final piece of the puzzle, and that people can finally have the whole story with this album,” he says. “We’ve got to this moment when the main character tries to grow up; to finally realise what’s really important to him, which is to find inner calm and get rid of toxicity. Maybe it’s about moving to a very small village somewhere near the sea, abandoning the big city, abandoning the crowd, and then trying to find himself in nature.”
It sounds as though he’s considering leaving his home in Warsaw for somewhere more tranquil and bucolic. Or is he suggesting that he’s made the move already? “Well, not yet,” he replies, “but I’m thinking about it. I grew up in a very small town in the northwest of Poland and I moved to Warsaw when I was 25. So now I’ve lived the same amount of time in Warsaw as I did in my hometown. Maybe I’ll stay for another 10 years and then move back to my roots, or something.”
Whatever comes next, it’s likely to be under his own name, as 2023’s AFR AI D was; though it won’t concern itself with AI, as that album did. “I realised that going in that direction is not a great idea,” he admits, “because AI can do better music in that way. Maybe I should focus more on specific structures. I’m good at melodies, I’m good at writing songs, I’m good at writing nice, catchy riffs.”
Moreover, he’s looking forward to being freed from the bondage of the concept. “I will be unchained!” he states cheerfully, “because with Lunatic Soul I always had to create albums that were connected with the previous ones. I’ve reached a point of great balance. I think it’s time to break the habit and maybe move on and do something new.”
The World Under Unsun is on sale now via Century Media.
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