Another freejazz variant that I’ve been watching since a long time ago is Shining, once again hailing from Scandinavia. I guess the libertarian social atmosphere must help creativity flourish in the north of Europe. Formed by Norwegian sax player and former Jaga Jazzist guy Jørgen Munkeby in 1999, Shining is a 4 piece which has released 4 albums including 2003’s “Sweet Shanghai Devil” on Bugge’sJazzland and their last 2 album on Rune Grammofon. 2007’s Grindstone has moved even farther from jazz into becoming a unique Shining creation which means noisy power rock, Mr. Bunglish odd prog compositions, squawking sax and experimentation. Anyways y’all know by now that Rune Grammofon doesn’t release anything below a treshold of uniqueness, weirdness and quality. This album is by far the heaviest done by Shining but there are lots of strange interlude’s with odd vocals & noise that delves them into soundscape territory. Just check for yourself, the first two tracks are from Grindstone and the last is from 2003’s on Jazzland. There’s also a strange video tipped by the band themselves which has been shot by a Norwegian ubergeek using a virtual reality machine. First watch the prologue here then continue down below.

Video to Winterreise, opening track on Grindstone