Lightshine
Feeling

A bipolar album. Between sweetness and pure madness. From dreamy harmonies to frenzied nightmares. This is Feeling by Lightshine, an album that defining as obscure is truly an understatement. Released in a limited number of copies, this work will remain the only one by this band from Germany, formed by a quintet full of ideas and technically quite skilled. After supporting several bands belonging to the renowned Krautrock scene, Olli, Joe, Ulli, Egon, and Wolfgang released their only effort before disbanding in 1977, not before having played over 200 concerts.

The limited success of Feeling is probably due to its rather limited distribution, as only 500 copies were published; the release date, among other things, refers to 1976, a year when Progressive and Krautrock began to lose their edge throughout Europe, significantly damaging the overall picture of the situation. Over the years, the members of Lightshine have disappeared, also because they had the unusual idea of hiding their surnames in the album credits. A real shame, as this LP had all the elements to breathe new life into the entire genre: we are indeed talking about a rather particular work, whose sounds oscillate between Eloy and Amon Düül II. At the beginning of the review, we spoke of a bipolar album: this is perhaps the feature that makes Feeling extremely unique. The listener will find themselves constantly balancing between dreamy and neurotic atmospheres, with no seamless transitions. The obvious demonstration of such "sound imbalance" can be found in the track “King and Queen,” the masterpiece of the Long Playing: a delirious and claustrophobic track, introduced by an accommodating melody that is simultaneously melancholic and unsettling, even in the lyrics; the piece spirals into absolute madness when the narrative voice shifts from an alleged servant of the king to the king himself, who, with a heartbreaking and hallucinated singing, threatens the queen with death, amidst hysterical and diabolical laughter. The rest of the track will continue to oscillate between the bucolic and the infernal, just like the entire album. “Sword In The Sky” is a high-energy track well-paced by the bass and drums, “Lory” shows the first signs of delirium and sonic obsessiveness, while in “Nightmare” the dreamy mood contrasts with a hallucinated and dark text. Side B unfolds through the aforementioned “King and Queen” and the title track of the album, with yet another heartbreaking explosion in the finale, in an ending that almost pays tribute to the ending of “21st Century Schizoid Man” by King Crimson. This sonic dichotomy is constantly marked especially by the guitar lines, sometimes light and harmonic, sometimes frenetic and nagging. The electronic sound effects produced by Olli also give the sound of Feeling an astonishing uniqueness, with the only flaw of repeating itself a bit too annoyingly throughout the album.

In the depths of Krautrock, it's easy to find hidden gems like Feeling by Lightshine, a gem that deserves listening for its sonic expertise, technique, and originality.