Sonic Dystopia

For his solo career, Riverside's Mariusz Duda wanted to create something as distinct from his day job as possible. He talks to Prog about returning to his first musical love, being creatively selfish, and embracing electronic music on AFR AID.

“I’m inspired by limitations,” says Mariusz Duda. As the mastermind of Riverside and Lunatic Soul, Duda is comfortable being a musical chameleon. But recently he’s expanded far beyond the bounds of progressive rock. He released three albums of electronica – Lockdown Spaces, Claustrophobic Universe and Interior Drawings, known collectively as the Lockdown Trilogy – in quick succession in 2020 and 2021. Now, with AFR AI D, his latest work as a solo artist, he’s giving free rein to his formative influences.

“I grew up on Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis,” says Duda. “Later on, Mike Oldfield and later, later on, progressive music. My very first music as a composer was electronic music. In the Lockdown Trilogy artbook, I even put a photo of my cassette tapes that I recorded in 1992. I had 15 of them. Believe me, no one wants to listen to that these days, but for me it was just the beginning. I wanted to emphasise that this is really important music for me.”

In 2023, Duda had originally planned to devote his time and energy to writing the next Lunatic Soul album, but then he went on vacation and everything changed.

“I decided to go on a holiday with my family in April, and I took some serious rest,” he says.