RIVERSIDE

Out Of Myself INSIDEOUT

Revisit Riverside’s riveting, remarkable and acutely realised debut outing.

Although they enjoyed a limited release in their Polish homeland, it was Ken Golden’s Laser’s Edge label, dedicated to finding and promoting obscure bands, who gave Riverside their big break internationally. Debut album Out Of Myself immediately garnered plaudits for its quality and ambition. Inhabiting a musical and often thematic space somewhere between Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree, Out Of Myself prompted many to reassess how they perceived prog metal, and it remains as powerful, brilliantly conceived and compelling as did back in 2004.

Twelve-minute opener The Same River starts deceptively slowly, with soft synth pads, an almost psychedelic ambience, building and shifting through multiple sections introducing bass, drums and the graceful and aurally luminous guitar work of Piotr Grudzin´ski, whose phrasings and sounds permeate so much here, hitting ‘peak Gilmour’ on penultimate track

The Curtain Falls. Mariusz Duda’s vocals make a real impact here and across the album’s remaining tracks – displaying the rare skill of fully expressing extremes of emotion through voice. The title track plays with a bubbling, urgent bass riff as a backdrop to Duda’s part breathy, part-strident, partwounded howl delivery, as the rest of the band build dramatic tension and release. We get the dreamy prog balladry of I Believe and the lush textures of In Two Minds as well as vivid pictures created in sound by the instrumentals Reality Dream and Reality Dream II, which showcase pretty much everyone in the band at various points. The ensemble playing is excellent and the sound palettes can envelope the unwary, but Out Of Myself also acts as a reminder of what a terrible loss the prog community and the band suffered when guitarist Grudzin´ski died in 2016.

Remastered and reissued for the first time since its original release, this is a sometimes bold, sometimes transcendental album by a band who have rightly turned many heads and challenged musical prejudices.