Greetings,
We haven't yet had a chance to say hello officially in 2021, so let us do it now. We hope that this year, even though here and there it didn't start very well, will mark the beginning of a return to normality, which we wish from to all of us the bottom of our hearts.
What was 2020 like? Apart from what we all know?
We managed to survive it, and we owe it to your support and trust. In March, we somehow made it to 9 concerts from the "With the Sun Tour". Obviously, for the known reasons, we didn't get everywhere we'd planned to go. We still hope that, at the first opportunity, we will be able to catch up on playing in front of live audiences but we don't know when that might be.
In December, we released two live albums. One is the official reissue of the "Lost and Found" show from 2015, enhanced with a DVD, and released this time on Inside Out. The other is an unofficial collection of different live performances from "Wasteland Tour 2018-2020". The latter was distributed in exchange for tickets to the cancelled shows in Poland, but please note that from this year, you can get this release if you are a member of our fan club. So we encourage you to sign up for "Shelter of Mine".
Most of all though, 2020 was the year of individual work for us:
Piotr focused on his shop, "Vintage Vinyl" (thanks to which, among others, our concert Box was released).
Michał shared his first solo track, "Breathe", followed by a few keyboard improvisations ("Sessions"), and then he let all the impatient fans know that he had finally finished working on his debut album, which will be released in 2021.
Maciej, who finally became the fourth member of Riverside at the beginning of 2020, also finished working on his album and released it straightaway. "Zenith" was out in September to many favourable reviews.
Mariusz, in turn, presented his first solo songs released under his name: "The Song of a Dying Memory" and "Are You Ready for the Sun", then his first solo experimental-electronic album, "Lockdown Spaces", and finished with "Through Shaded Woods", the seventh (double!) album of Lunatic Soul.
As you can see, 2020 was quite busy in the Riverside Universum. Looks like all we need to do is stop playing concerts.
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What will 2021 be like? Apart from what we all think?
First of all, Riverside are returning to the rehearsal room! And that's where we will definitely start preparing for our... attention: 20th anniversary! Yes, we find it hard to believe as well, but Riverside is 20 years old in 2021! So what does it mean? How to reconcile our anniversary celebrations with the pandemic? We will definitely come up with something interesting.
Apart from that, it is our pleasure to let you know that we will also be working on the successor to "Wasteland". It's hard to tell at the moment what the new sounds will be like, but after a decade of melancholy, we would surely like to go back to heavier and more intense music. Out eighth release will definitely be heavier. What we don't know yet is the shape of the third release with "in my head" in its title, which will be out before the full album.
So these are our plans: we're going back to the rehearsal room, we're going to work on new material for one or two releases, think and plan our anniversary, and, obviously, let you know about everything on our social media.
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Thank you for being with us last year, thank you for being with us now, we hope you will stay with us in the future. Together, it will definitely be easier to survive another difficult hear. Let's hope everything will go in the right direction!
Take care of yourselves, be strong, be healthy and stay in touch. And once again, all the best for the new year!
Your Riverside