It’s not easy for anyone outside the closed-knit group a band represents to imagine the turmoil that engulfs each member when one of their number passes away. In February last year, Piotr Grudzinski, founding member and guitarist of Polish progressive legends Riverside, collapsed and died, the victim of a sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest. It took nearly six months for the band to rally sufficiently to announce what the future would hold, although a compilation (which had already been in the works) appeared in the meantime. After a lengthy absence from the live stage, the band decided to continue, albeit with session guitarists on live tours and as a three-piece in the studio, and so, over a year after Piotr’s tragic loss, the band have finally returned to the stage with the ‘Toward the Blue Horizon’ tour, an experience that the band hope will prove cathartic for themselves and audience alike.
Shorn of support, the tour comprises a lengthy, two-hour set that encapsulates the storied history of the band, with tracks ranging from 2005’s ‘second life syndrome’ (albeit with ‘Anno Domini High Definition’ sadly left out of the party) all the way to 2015’s ‘Love, fear and the time machine’. However, before we get to see the band, there is a lengthy wait which includes a thirty-minute extract from ‘Eye of the soundscape’. In the increasingly hot, dark and loud confines of Leamington Spa’s Assembly rooms it becomes something of an endurance test and so it is a great relief when the band finally set foot on stage.
Kicking off with the short finale to ‘shrine of new generation Slaves’, ‘coda’, the band rapidly get into their stride and into the audience’s collective head with a monstrous rendition of ‘second life syndrome’, a hulking bass monster that sees touring guitarist Maciej Meller appear on stage (to a huge cheer) to deliver the gleaming leads that play out the second half of the track. With Mariusz Duda in fine form and Michal Lapaj clearly happy to be back behind the keyboards, it’s clear that Riverside are keen to use this tour as a celebration of their former band mate’s life and it results in a bitter-sweet show that reminds the audience just how powerful Riverside can be in the live environment. The band remain with their second album for a taut rendition of ‘conceiving you’, before shooting forward through their catalogue to ‘love, fear and the time machine’ for a razor-sharp version of ‘Caterpillar and the barbed wire’, all jagged riffs and dense layers of percussion. It’s heady stuff, gloriously progressive and many are the points where, with the pulsing, blood red stage lighting, endless haze and flashing triangles, it’s easy to get lost and imagine you’re witness to some long lost Pink Floyd performance from the mid-70s. A seriously lengthy version of ‘the depth of self-delusion’ only adds to that feeling, and, with the songs segueing directly into one another, Riverside creating one epic, flowing piece of music that floods from the stage and over the audience. It’s not all perfect, however, and there are points during the first half of the set where a more dynamic pacing of the material would have helped. This is quickly fixed in the second half, where the music has greater ebb and flow to it.
Close to an hour in and Mariusz takes a moment to address the crowd, strapping on an acoustic guitar (to considerable catcalls from the Polish audience members), before leading the crowd into a sing along version of ‘Lost (why should I be frightened by a hat?)’ which then primes the audience into adding their vocals to the agitated prog of ’02 Panic Room’, much to the band’s surprise. It’s back to the new album for one of the set’s high points, the convoluted majesty of ‘Saturate me’, but the real peak is reached with the epic-length ‘Escalator shrine’, which stretches out into the dark confines of the venue, drawing the listeners in, one by one, until they’re left simply swaying to the hypnotic keyboards and Gilmour-esque guitar work. The main portion of the set then concludes with ‘before’, the trippy album closer from ‘second life syndrome’ which draws as much influence from the trip hop of Massive Attack as it does from progressive bands. The band cap the evening off with ‘Towards the blue horizon’, the track from which the tour gained its name, and a reprise of ‘Coda’ before leaving an audience reeling from what they have just witnessed.
It’s wonderful to see Riverside back on the road once more. Their music gains new life in the live environment and it was an emotional moment to see the band on stage together after their tragic loss. Clearly united in their passion for the music, Riverside delivered exactly the catharsis for which they hoped, uniting the fervent audience with their magical melodies in what was a truly special night. 9
