Reviewing S/T: Catatonic Airkraut (Lone Starfighter Records LSD 01)
German psychedelic / progressive rock (or Krautrock as we prefer to call it) is on the rise again. Indications for this improved situation are coming from unlikely places: Lone Starfighter Records is a new label from ... San Antonio, Texas ( U.S.A )! How this label ever got into contact with the german duo S/T (Mr. Miller and Horse Badorties) is a mystery to me, but their first mini LP (five tracks/31 minutes) is a fact. Catatonic Airkraut came out as a see-through ultramarine blue 10", tucked away in an artful gimmix sleeve. S/T is clearly very much influenced by early seventies German psychedelics because the five tracks on this nice blue platter all bear the mark of that period. Airkraut is over 10 minutes long and features Hawkwind-ish space drive combined with the weirder moments of an early Amon Düül II, fantastic brainsplitting mayhem. Erzengels Donnervogel (the title is a straight translation of Amon Düül II’s Archangel’s Thunderbird from Yeti) is a very spooky song based on phased, echoing keyboards and very stoned, recited German lyrics. The B side starts with Now, a very tripped-out ballad with dramatic (English) vocals, moody piano and weird background noises. Wieners is a more psychy folk track with dreamy vocals and some sparse keyboard support. Clustermania is an instrumental that brings back memories of early Kraftwerk / Popol Vuh / Cluster albums. Echoing keyboards dominate this excellent dreamaway into the cosmos experience. This is obviously an underground debut release made with very little money and equipment, but stoned ideas always shine through! A strange but very recommended debut, destined to become a collector’s item, since only 500 numbered copies were made of this cleverly packaged psychedelic pearl.
Unknown, Crohinga Well #11, 1995-12-08