MOONGLOW

KANOI, a one-man rock project by Benjamin KANTSCHIEDER, shows one of strategies for launching Krautrock flavour, with his personal interpretation and original tribalism and psychedelia here and there.

From the beginning "Atlantean Conductor" his innovative edge of insanity can be heard ... hippy, trippy, groovy persistence created with percussive rhythm depth with kinky, grumpy guitar fuzzez are pretty of addiction. No need to analyze, but to leave yourself along with the mind-altering agent. The following folksy acidity "Birdsong" reminds me Jerry Garcia's stoner blues. Benjamin's dreamy voices take us into the bottom of his blue sound sea ... this effect might have been experienced when I listened to The Folk Crusaders in my younger days. And his verdict upon acid folk scene is flicked up as an unstable sound tremor. Mysterious really.

Sadly the two tracks in the middle of this album sound less experimental than others mentioned above. In "Witch Mt." his shoegaze guitar shots fly over based upon sticky blues riffs. Curious he played such a simple song like "Strawberry Jam" with imaging what. Good songs nonetheless.

On the contrary, "Armor & Blade" drives us crazy with his deep, mellow, magnificent psychedelic theatre in the middle part, and with slimy organ -based sound fractal. Why can we keep breathing? The last tricky elektronika "Snow Country" can be quite suitable for our nightcap filled with persistent hypnotic atmosphere. A good ending for us. Ahem, good feeling later.

Blues finds its way anyway!

Austrian born Benjamin Kantschieder is a one man band named KANOI, not far from Buckethead's concept. Moonglow, 2013, is close in spirit to Blues' long gone legends like the unrepeatable Stevie Ray Vaughan's raunchiness and overdrive or early cosmic blues/rock stylings.

Krautrock gives shelter to this kind of un-proggy/proggy efforts, as long as they carry some kind of "inner craziness" not found in their root music foundations to distinguish them from those same pure blues/rock artists. KANOI's holds some of these unpure momentums along the way.

Music language wise its closeness to these old standards, I suppose, seems surprising nowadays. Kanoi's energy drive is his best weapon yet do not expect groundbreaking musical structures, better yet, appreciate his fidelity to old Blues/Rock guidelines, which by themselves are not that Proggy but Prog related or Proto prog founded, blended with touches of electronic music decorations and sonic environments, which are in fact where he sounds more unique and Progressive.

Well written songs (there are 6), but kind of low keyed by its own proposal and idiom to travel beyond the ***3 PA stars rating and criteria. But good certainly suits it to perfection.