As a teen, I worked in the music section at Borders constructing complex, unsanctioned Siltbreeze displays and replacing listening-station copies of John Tesh's Sax on the Beach with Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz or John Coltrane's Stellar Regions. It was during one of these escapades that a manager approached me and pronounced Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady "too raucous," adding that he liked his jazz "spry," before hiking his Dockers and trudging off to the New York Times Bestseller List section. I bring this up because jazz purists (and in this dude's case, "pure" = "freshly fallen snow") make even the most obnoxiously close-minded indie nerds look as chilled-out as opium-drugged Taoists. So, those of you who never graduated beyond "hard bop" would be doing yourselves a favor by turning back now. For anyone else:
In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster is the third album (and first for Rune Grammofon) from Norway-based Shining, an experimental collective whose lineup includes two former members of Ninja Tune's electro-lite combo Jaga Jazzist: This album doesn't even remotely hint at that band's bland, ivory-tickling, snare-wrapping pedigree; Kingdom is labyrinthine, alternately creeping and brutally visceral, and certainly raucous.
Maybe these sparkling, teetering, huge sounds reflect the coming-of-age of Shining's leader, multi-instrumentalist Jørgen Munkeby, who joined Jaga in 1996 when he was only 16. Tellingly, Munkeby grew up listening to Sepultura and Pantera before taking on the saxophone at the wee age of nine. Helping point Shining in other non-jazz (and non-metal) directions, bassist Aslak Hartberg is the mastermind behind Norway's best-selling hip-hop collective, Klovner i Kamp. So what do we have here: Jazzy art rock? Proggy jazz? Who knows. On top of any number of brassy instruments, there are clattering drum machines, moaning synths, chameleonic samplers, swooning (and frequently buried) vocal harmonies, and thunderous, window-rattling cathedral organs.
Shining frontload the record with "Goretex Weather Report", an opener as mighty as anything I've heard this year. It begins with sparse, muted saxophone exhalations, clean handclaps, and tentative, chugging ministrations before, after a minute or so, thundersticks connect with earthly skins and guitars picks off stars. Taciturn in comparison, "REDRUM" offers dueling horns over squiggles of drums, rat-a-tat rave-ups, and a sighing vocal clip. "Romani" goes for flute/clarinet, distant bass, some drums, and vibes/xylophone, and the instrumentation descends while airy, harmonizing vocals ascend. The track doesn't explore much distance, but it covers a lot of surface area.
Despite its ostentatious, Dune-referencing title, "31 = 300 = 20 (It Is By Will Alone I Set My Mind in Motion)" is a whisper, as if the band were playing from behind a wall of Tony Conrad gauze. But after a few minutes of drifting, sighing, and softly imploding, Shining mash together AM-radio vocal bugs, some extinct country's national anthem, and a feverish drum breakdown. Elsewhere, like wheedling new wave, "The Smoking Dog" kicks electro-drumpad Western tango and some (I kid you not) Bobby McFerrin-inspired scat, while the gonging and droning "Magazine RWRK" buzzes with atmospherics reminiscent of a plodding noise band jamming with a virtuoso French horn player.
Check it out: There, somewhere over the horizon, that guy in the Mr. Bungle shirt took silent note of a playful 7/8 atmospheric break and wept in double-time. Over there, some kid tired of improvising to Rush and the "Benny Hill Theme" just got his groove back. But, hey techy, before you pick up a stopwatch and dork out, note that Shining keep things brief, subtle, tight, and aesthetically on-the-mark, suggesting progness (or at least, jazz kids spreading their rock wings) is often less about duration and bombast than complexity, invention, and the rigorous interplay of its players.
