The Shining Levels is a musical collective existing on the edge of the northern English moors using rural folk musicians, loops and electronics, the result is a heady brew of gritty landscape hymns, ethereal acid-folk, borderlands ballads, 70s folk horror TV/film atmospherics, mood pieces, echoes of the colliery bands of old, moor-top drones and much more.

Their debut album - "Music Inspired by The Gallows Pole" - was released on vinyl in 2019 by Outré Disque (home of Paris popsters Juniore) to many favourable reviews, with subsequent singles garnering radio support from the likes of Radcliffe/Maconie, Gideon Coe and James Endeacott   

Autumn of 2022 sees them re-assemble to release music inspired by the work of fellow Durham resident and Booker prize-winning author Pat Barker, whose novel "The Silence of the Girls" has been described as a feminist retelling of Homer's Iliad.

This new musical project deals with themes from the book and evokes its worldly and other-worldly characters using ethereal harmonies, flutes, fiddles, upright piano, upright bass and other acoustic instruments alongside vintage synths and electronics.

The new vinyl album is released by Butterfly Effect Records and will be available following a live launch performance at Durham Book Festival on October 15th

A2 Silence Of The Girls Vinyl Master

Gallows Pole

Gallows Pole OST Teaser

Moonless Nights

Men Of Straw

Broken On A Wheel

Progress! (digital master)

The Shining Levels is a new collective of folk and electronic musicians from Northumberland and Durham. Writing and recording on the edge of the Northern Moors in Durham and Northumberland, “automatic writing” and cut-and-paste techniques are employed to evoke atmospheres of the surrounding hinterlands

The Shining Levels

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