SHINING — Where the Ragged People Go (review)

SHINING — Where the Ragged People Go album cover

Album · 2001 · Non-Metal

3/5 · 2020-12-25
siLLy puPPy

Not to be confused with the Swedish depressive black metal band of the same name, the Norwegian band SHINING is the baby of mastermind and primary composer, singer, guitarist and saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby who started this band as an avant-garde freeform jazz band in 1999 but had drastically shifted gears in its two decade existence ranging from extreme avant-garde jazz-fueled metal to industrial rock. In the beginning the band started as an acoustic instrumental jazz quartet that featured Munkeby on saxophone, flute and clarinet with Asiak Hartberg on acoustic bass, Torstein Lofthus on drums and Morten Qvenild on piano.

In the early 2000s Norway was the hotbed for nu jazz artists such as Jaga Jazzist and Bugge Wessesltoft who focused on fusing electronica with jazz and other genres such as soul, funk and free improvisation but SHINING which formed while the members were attending the Norwegian Academy of Music decided to go the route of the avant-garde acoustic expressions forged in the early 1960s by the legendary John Coltrane and pioneering Ornette Coleman. For anyone familiar with albums like “Black Jazz,” it may come as quite the surprise that on this debut release WHERE THE RAGGED PEOPLE GO that there is no trace of rock or metal and features a pure post-bop ethos laced with avant-garde freelancing.

All eight of the tracks are original scores by Munkeby and range from disharmonic antics of “Spooks In The Hall” and “Small Steps” to the more placid numbers like “The Fool” and “Randomizer” but the album shows a strong allegiance to the early 60s stylistic approach and seems rather achronistic for an album coming out at the beginning of the 21st century. In fact if you told me this was some long lost Ornette Coleman album that was thrown in the vaults around the time “The Shape Of Jazz To Come” was released in 1959, i can’t say that i wouldn’t believe it to be so as the attention paid to the authenticity of the era is uncanny and there is little to distinguish SHINING from a huge number of similar jazz acts that have come and gone throughout the decades.

Considering how Munkeby ventured into the caustic cauldrons of extreme metal a few albums later, it is utterly shocking how this album sounds nothing like those future releases and may possibly qualify as the most pure jazz album to appear on metal music databases. Overall the performances on here are top notch although the creativity level is non-existence as this is very much by the books post-bop with avant-garde leanings from the classic era of jazz just before psychedelic rock and prog pushed jazz out as the dominant musical art form once and for all. While metal fans will find nothing noteworthy here and even hardcore jazz fans will not find anything revolutionary, WHERE THE RAGGED PEOPLE GO is a worthy listening experience with all those trademark 60s instrumental roles such as those cool bass runs and sax squawks. A decent jazz album for sure but if you’re looking for metal skip the first two albums and go straight to SHINING’s third album “In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster.”