Enter the Shining Realm by Shining Realm–Album Review
Enter the Shining Realm by Shining Realm–Album Review
As someone who receives quite a few unsolicited music submissions, I find it rare when a track makes it onto my personal playlist. It’s rarer still when I find an album so compelling that I listen to it repeatedly as I have with neo-psychedelic band Shining Realm’s debut album, Enter the Shining Realm.
My biggest complaint against neo-psych, a sub-genre I greatly enjoy, is that there is a sameness to it. That is, a lot of the bands sound similar because they use the same instrumentation and same production techniques—namely lots of reverb on the vocals and guitar and/or a cosmic keyboard sound dialed in for maximum psych effect. In other words, there’s too much emphasis on sounding neo-psych without actually being very psychedelic.
Shining Realm has crafted a wholly psychedelic album that sounds completely unique, draws from Eastern mystical influences, and still appeals to pop sensibilities. Not only that, it tells a freakin’ story! It’s a conceptual fantasy album that occurs in a magical land and it’s incredibly engrossing throughout its 37 minute run-time. As the album’s description on The Shining Realm’s Bandcamp page says, “Ancient Spirits piloting mortal flesh suits through the holographic dimensions on our way to the Realm where all space and time converge into the Great Radiance!” Groovy, man!
The Shining Realm is an Iowa City-based music collective that features musicians from prominent bands in the region. Singer/whistler Charles Pagan, bassist Todd Woody, and multi-instrumentalist Maxwell Strobe were in an Iowa City psych-rock band called Commanders while other members performed in late 80s/90s Minneapolis punk band Run Westy Run. Pagan and Strobe attended the University of Iowa and majored in Comparative Lit and Art, respectively, though only Strobe earned a degree. Jon Hansen, who mixed and mastered the album in addition to providing backing vocals and percussion, currently teaches at the U of I.
Shining Realm has crafted a wholly psychedelic album that sounds completely unique, draws from Eastern mystical influences, and still appeals to pop sensibilities.
Shining Realm creates their sound mostly with folk instrumentation. The saz, which is a long-necked lute used in Turkish folk music, appears throughout. There’s a sitar-sounding guitar along with chanting, droning vocals, and lots of toms. On some tracks, there appear to be multiple vocalists.
The album starts off with a spacey keyboard that sounds something like the dawn of time and builds up slowly in intensity as other instruments (hand drums, tambourine, triangle, gong) chime in as something inchoate takes form. “Ascension”, an instrumental, is the perfect opener as it sets a mystical, cosmic vibe.
The second track “Enter the Shining Realm” is where the journey begins. It sounds like a Middle-Eastern caravan parading into town. You can hear the marching beat and imagine the aggregation of camels, elephants, and shrouded figures holding flags sashaying through a bejeweled desert.
With a memorable melody, the third song “Temple of the Sun” is the standout track. Although it, like the album itself, is steeped in Paganism, it has a cheerful, uplifting feel to it—like singing in the shower before your big date.
“Lay Down Your Sword” furthers the tale with droning and spoken-word vocals. It features a fuzzed-out Eastern-sounding guitar riff set to a foreign beat (and introduces a new character!).
You can hear the marching beat and imagine the aggregation of camels, elephants, and shrouded figures holding flags sashaying through a bejeweled desert.
The fifth track “Phantom Caravan” doesn’t sound like a caravan at all. There’s no marching beat as there is in the title track. With its Eastern drone, it sounds mysterious, although it doesn’t really go anywhere. At 2:37, it’s the shortest track on the record.
“A Pilot of Mortality” has a plodding beat with more than one vocalist on both the verse and chorus. There’s some nice recorder work here by Strobe.
“Bleed a Prayer from a Stone” features the stoic vocal stylings of Mr. Charles Pagan. Like most of the album, this song sounds like it might be featured in a period piece that occurs in the middle-East. Toward the end, it erupts into a frenzy that sounds a lot like a feverish belly dance. Lyrically, it’s similar to the story The Sword in the Stone from the Legend of King Arthur, but it’s different enough to keep your focus in the Shining Realm. This is the album’s climax.
If you like excellent psychedelic music (and I know you do), be sure to check out this unexpected gem of an album.
The penultimate track “Across the Ocean” sounds much more caravan-esque than the song “Phantom Caravan” and even references said caravan in the lyrics. As in the title-track, there is a marching beat here, but it’s slower–as if the caravan was leaving rather than just arriving.
“Amida” serves as a proper outro and contains perhaps the LP’s most interesting lyrics: I travel the astral plane searching for a sacred place/ beyond the realm of life and death/ beyond the prison of time and space/ The soul is entering the shining realm”. There are some super-psychedelic vocals toward the end along with a distorted electric guitar solo–a fantastic ending to a fabulous record.
Enter the Shining Realm is the collective’s first album, which was recorded over the course of 14 months beginning in 2019 and released in June of this year.
If you like excellent psychedelic music (and I know you do), be sure to check out this unexpected gem of an album.
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