FEELING

One of the late to the Krautrock party bands from Emmerich am Rhein, Germany, the obscure LIGHTSHINE formed in 1974 and only managed to create one album titled FEELING which landed on the tiny Trefiton label in 1976 with a whopping total of 1000 copies thus making original copies one of those collectors' top picks for everything obscure 1970s of the prog world. Consisting of a lineup that eschewed surnames, the quintet of Olli (synthesizer), Joe (vocals, lead guitar), Wolfgang (bass, vocals), Ulli (guitar, flute, vocals and Egon (drums) may have crashed the Kraut-party a bit late but still resonated with all those wild experimental antics of the then recent past.

Despite the obscure nature of the band for decades, FEELING has rightfully been rediscovered many times with an easily attainable CD edition on the Garden of Delights label. This is one of those hard to define bands outside of the umbrella term Krautrock since LIGHTSHINE showcased moments of heavy prog, jazz-rock, funk, psychedelic folk and even avant-garde adventurism but for the most part the album is dedicated to strong catchy grooves that offer upfront melodies and instant catchiness that are further accented by the more progressive space rock touches that take it far out of the more popular hard rock, jazz-rock and Deutschrock styles that were much more popular by the time this was released.

"Sword In The Sky" features the mashup of hard rock, prog and exciting flute runs and ends in a fluttering climax. The second track "Lori" features the main riff borrowed from "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg which mixes the classical motifs with thundering guitar, bass and drums along with the rock star vocal styles of Joe. What makes this album a true stand out is that each track is radically different from the next and for the third track "Nightmare" the mood takes a turn for the psychedelic with trippy oscillating synthesizer runs, a slow building guitar arpeggiated motif and a dueling vocal build up. The slower space rock slowly builds in intensity as the second longest track of the album at 10 1/2 minutes slinks back and forth between spoken word vocals and Pink Floydian guitar licks. The track alternates with a fiery build up of suppressed rock angst with killer keyboard antics.

The lengthiest track "King And Queen" at nearly 14 minutes begins with trippy keyboard freakery that once resolved transmogrifies into another space rock motif with a sharply pronounced melodic bass groove and more Floydian guitar runs that remind me of some of the more modern guitar sweeps in neo-prog. This is the track where the vocals don't work out so well as Joe seems to have a clunky presentation but despite the lack of a strong vox box, the backing vocals provide a nice supplemental harmonic display. Very emotive and instantly addictive which is why some of the tracks on this album were played on local radio stations. This is probably also the folkiest track of the album but it ends in a blues rock meets flamenco frenzy with wild Exuma freak folk styled vocals.

The ending title track ventures into dreamy territory with off-kilter guitar arpeggios and strange contrapuntal elements. This one is clearly focused on atmospheric freakiness over all and is the most kosmische psychedelic of the tracks on board most similar to Amon Duul II's "Yeti" era with tribal drums and free floating trippiness however this is much mellower with no buzzing guitars. The guitar tones are clean while the myriad keyboard sounds swarm around. The two vocalists offer a bit of prog folk style of singing which brings English folk to mind more than anything German but the lyrics sounds more like something Eloy would conjure up than any German band. This is a fairly unique album to come out of the Krautrock scene and a really great one too minus a vocal awkwardness or two but mostly this is a solid album that was authentically early 70s despite its late appearance in 1976 on the Kraut timeline.