BLISTERFINGER (WITH TANKSTELLENPROLETEN)

Kanoi is a one-man project by the Austrian multi instrumentist Benjamin Kantschieder, but this debut album is mainly a duo with a drummer nicknamed Tankstellenproleten, where Tankstellen in German means "service station" and proleten something like "red neck".

After a short noisy-trippy intro (Maelstorm - not Maelstrom) we are in a bluesy and acid jam made of guitar, drums and bass. It seems to come up from a time-machine. What's more Krautrock than this "Blisterfinger"? Old Thunderhead follows. It's another jam, I don't know how much improvised. Slower than the previous track it sees the guitar providing a layer for the drummer which leads the track. The guitar makes mainly a single chord with some soloist notes here and there, but the purpose is supporting the drumming.

"Papules/Postules" has a Floydian start, I mean the first post-Barrett period - Saucerful Of Secrets to mention an album. Blues transformed into psychedelia but unfortunately without the keyboards of a Rick Wright which in the end makes it sound closer to the Grateful Dead than to Pink Floyd. An excellent track, anyway, if you are in the right mood for old-fashioned psych stuff. It becomes more rock in the second half but still very acid.

Speaking of trips, "Turquoise Coloured Tide" has an acid title too. Initially it's just few drumbeats and some repetitive guitar, apparently sequenced, behind. The track progresses slowly with the guitar jamming a bit of blues on the drums which play the same thing throughout the whole track. Hypnotic.

If it was a vinyl, and it may have been conceived in this way, the 1 minute and half of "Re- Entry" could have been the intro to the B-side. Following there's a track with a space-rock title: "A swirl in Jovian kies". It's the longest jam of the album, scoring more than 17 minutes. It's very hypnotic, still based on drums and guitar with the bass supporting the passages as a keyboard may have done. The sound is fullfilled by echo end reverb on the guitar. The base is still acid blues as Krautrock often is. IN some moments the guitar seems wishing to escape from this layout but it doesn't, as it was constrained into the track's boudaries. Anyway, unless it's a high-pitched bass, I think sometimes that there are two guitar tracks overdubbed. After 16 minutes of lazyness, the last minute sees the drums increasing the volume and close the track as lead instrument to a fading out final.

If the longest track was very relaxing, "Scorched/Scattered" returns to the blues-based psychedelia. With different arrangements and sound it could have been hard rock. The problem is that only drums and guitar with only a little help from bass can't cross the krautrock boudaries. The chords remind to Devo's "Mongoloid".

Anyway, after Jupiter we see the "Titanian Moonrise". It sounds to me very Californian-psych. at least in the first beats. The fact that the bass is now the principal and louder instrument makes it different from the other tracks. It also gives the guitar the possibility to express its sound better.

Relistening to Stellar Collider I have had the impression of my left feet becoming longer....jokes apart, this is the closing track of a trippy album after more than one hour of music. Not for everybody, this music is everything but challenging, but requires the right mood, let's say, after a good lunch.

A space-time trip from the 70s. Very close to 4 stars, just a bit too long. It's a free download and despite being quite a standard krautrock album, with very few surprises, it deserves to be listened.