Acid Mothers Temple
In C CD
(see reviews of New Geocentric World below...)
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Dusted Ezine-June 4, 2002 In C refers to a hugely influential 1964 piece by minimalist composer Terry Riley, in which an indeterminate number of performers, guided by a steady pulse, play from a group of motives that revolve around the key of C. Each musician gets to choose when to move on to the next motive, so the piece becomes a dense, ever-changing, pulsating sound that ends when all the performers have played all of Riley's motives. Riley's work revolted against not only the opposition to repetition prevalent in the world of classical music, but also classical music's tendency to view the performer and the audience as separate entities: Riley's "In C" doesn't require great virtuosity to play, so performances can be communal. Acid Mothers Temple's version of the piece, which begins with Terukina Noriko playing the first few motives on a glockenspiel, is recognizable for about two minutes. Then the rest of the band enters, turning the piece into a sky-gazing krautrock-y jam. This move probably breaks all of the few rules that Riley established for performers of the piece, but it feels weirdly reverent because AMT recognizes the features that made Riley's work important. This is repetitive, after all, and it's performed with such a sense of spontaneity and joyful abandon that the effect would be similar whether six musicians or twenty were playing it. These senses of spontaneity and abandon are two of AMT's most important features. Acid Mothers Temple draws on a huge canvas with fluorescent paint; its music is wild, expansive and often ridiculously loud, like on the stomping "In E." But it doesn't feel cartoonish, thanks to the group members' ability to filter many different kinds of music-- psych, krautrock, minimalism, drones (check out the gorgeous sustain on ³In D²)- while showing plenty of love for the records that inspired them but without strictly emulating any one band or musician. So it's easy to get immersed in In C the album, which is layered and free-flowing in a way that feels like it's spiraling off in a thousand directions at once. AMT's music is so dramatic, texturally rich, and, well, big that it creates its own world: when heard in the right frame of mind, Acid Mothers Temple feels like the only band in the universe that matters."-Charlie Wilmouth "Composer Terry Riley initiated the minimalist movement from California with his 1964 opus In C. On this album, Acid Mothers Temple, the Japanese Hawkwind, perform their version in overdrive. Included is the group's own single-chord experiments "In E" (performed during their 2001 U.S. tour) and the potent "In D." Like a fusion of Blue Cheer and Curved Air, AMT is a churning space rock. Their wide swath of fuzz gives each piece substance and considerable weight on this classic disc of rooted neo-psychedelia. (5 out of 5)"-Tom Schulte Big Takeover 51 "In the last few years, the Japanese music collective known as Acid Mothers Temple have been making substantial waves throughout the world, bringing the grand tradition of psychedelic drone rock to new, unsuspecting audiences everywhere they go. Taking obvious cues from Hawkwind, Gong, Neu!, Popul Vuh, Can, Amon Duul and Faust, AMTıs interest in musik cosmische also extends to 20th century minimalist electronic compositionhence the incredibly effective rendition of Terry Rileyıs classic In Cı recording. While it would be easy to dismiss such an effort as overwrought, AMT have taken Rileyıs piece to a new level by using traditional rock instrumentation to flesh it out. The results are incredibly inspired and approximate the original without being too precious or too radically minded. In addition, the band also add two of their own long compositions to the mix, the brutally unsettling In Eı and the sublimely majestic In Dı. Great! Cleveland Scene, October 16, 2002 "It's been years since someone has had the guts, ego, and lack of irony to take on the mantle held by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and (the overrated) Eric Clapton. But leave it to the country that brought us the larger-than-life stompings of Godzilla and Rodan to resurrect the guitar god. Acid Mothers Temple is the brain child of Japanese guitar virtuoso Makoto Kawabata, who is described by normally stuffy Wire magazine as "one of the greatest post-Hendrix blood and fire guitarists." On songs like "Virgin UFO Feedback," from the band's 2001 release Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind!!), it's obvious he deserves the comparison. Roaring guitar solos sweep and dive over themselves; long notes break into fuzzy feedback that ventures close to pure noise before scrambling back. It's a display of guitar playing at its most unhinged. And yet it would be wrong to say that lysergic wailing is all Acid Mothers Temple is about. The band also revels in Black Sabbath's plodding sludge and some of Hawkwind's trippy psychedelia. Kawabata's perpetually morphing group, which formed in 1997 as a jam project, is now described as a collective of around 30 members -- including musicians, dancers, artists, and even farmers. It might be this diversity that allows Acid Mothers Temple to move so easily from Kraftwerk and Philip Glass to folk-like meditations complete with traditional Japanese string instruments. Then again, with the average song clocking in at 20 minutes, these guys have plenty of time to explore. Do us a favor and give them some of yours."-Richard Wagle Music Dish 11/13/02 "This is a cool Japanese/rock take on minimalist composer Terry Riley's "In C"-where Riley uses strings and mellow horns, these two bands use electric guitars, banshee wails, electronic drones and amazing percussion. It's really a brilliant interpretation of Riley's work, and they go on to create an "In D" and "In E" that use "In C" as a launchpad, but take it in a much heavier, noisier direction. They've even gone so far as to reproduce the original "In C"'s cover art, with some significant modifications. This is definitely not the Kronos Quartet here-this collaborative project is much wilder and disturbing than any Riley-commissioned project I've ever heard."-Holly Day |
Reviews for:
New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple CD/LP
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Chicago Tribune March 18, 2002 "Acid Mothers Temple melted minds with an overwhelming barrage of space-rock guitars and synthesizers, an effect made even more glorious by the Japanese sextet's dramatic use of silence, folk melody and the droning Eastern tonalities of throat singing, which suggests several voices moaning at once. The group had more hair than Foghat, more volume than Blue Cheer and nearly as much speed as Hawkwind. Plus, it's aptly named: This was a church service for acid-rock worshipers, and there's no better band in the genre now."-Greg Kot Village Voice, Week of February 13 - 19, 2002 Earache, My (Third) Eye "Japan's is a culture of cute. Everywhere you turn, there is some infantilized icon being force-fed to a society that seems to gorge on silly banality like artificially sweetened mother's milk. The most visible symbol of cute gone wild is of course Hello Kitty, which is plastered on everything from cheap handbags to couture clothing. But there's also the doe-eyed innocents found in so much anime, and those annoying Pokemon gorgons, which you might find plastered on your Boeing 747 the next time you hightail it to Tokyo. Japan's psychedelic underground has engaged in a sustained rearguard assault on this culture of synthetic charm for more than three decades now, battling callow materialism with an iron cudgel of liberated noise. Guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi and the late free jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe are the spiritual leaders of the movement, maverick eccentrics whose mangled-note mosaics were a formative influence on current bands like Fushitsusha, elder guitarist and hurdy-gurdy player Keiji Haino's experiment in Sabbath-bloody-Sharrock freak-out. Drawing inspiration from the country's rich tradition of deafening abstraction, Jap-psych's most compelling ensemble is Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paradiso U.F.O., a big, hulking amoeba with a massive corpus of recorded music and a deliriously protean sound. Acid Mothers Temple's mad scientist is Makoto Kawabata, a guitarist who was weaned on rock of the prog, hard, and kraut varietyAmon Düül, Deep Purple, Genesis. Viscous music drips out of Kawabata's pores; he recorded over 40 homemade cassettes before he graduated high school, then worked in countless noisy groups throughout the '80s and '90s before starting Acid Mothers Temple in 1997. AMT is less a formal band than a clutch of farmers, crackpot mystics, ex-yakuza members, and painters from Nagoya, West Japan, who live in a loosely communal environment. "The soul collective exists in order to protect our freedom," Kawabata told The Wire magazine recently. "Our slogan is simply: 'If you want to do something, then do itno matter what.' " AMT cultivate a cultish image. For pictures, they tend to wear peasants' frocks and Rosicrucian robes and wield wooden walking sticks, like something from an old Incredible String Band album cover. AMT's own album art is all strobing lens-distortion and Odyssey and Oracle Day-Glo tableaux. There's an element of dime-store mysticism in their well-cultivated mythology, but just for self-referential kicks, really. Kawabata likes to fuck with Summer of Love imagery, but his very loud happening is a hippie smile turned upside-down. For Kawabata, '60s psychedelic rock only paid lip service to breaking boundaries, and the plastic inevitable never really exploded. AMT turn unfettered anarchy into a dose of ecstasy. Acid Mothers Temple's huge recorded outputthey have released albums with English-language titles like Absolutely Freak Out and Monster of the Universeis really one long distended trip, with countless detours (Tuvan throat-singing, pastoral folk, bleep-blip electronics) that periodically double back into a gurgling primordial soup of minimalist, amped-up drone. Epic noise polluters like "Bois-tu la biere?" use the basic tools of rockone chord, one elemental Moe Tucker beatas an armature that is then made whole with jagged shards of sound, strange spectral yelps and chanting, and slash-and-rattle guitar lines. Often, the band will downshift into extreme austerity and let the mayhem slowly accrete until they have constructed a tsunami that just keeps cresting. I haven't come close to hearing everything the Acid Mothers have recorded, because it's a bitch to sniff it all outwhich is, of course, a large part of AMT's appeal for snobby Other Music types. But I will say that, based on my limited if well-intentioned fieldwork, AMT's latest release, New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple, might be the band's most likely to succeed. Or at least the tracks that flip the bird at tuneful niceties are countered by some really gorgeous stuff. The opening track, which bears the absurd title "Psycho Buddha," is a pincer movement of eardrum pain, an absurdly tumultuous yet oddly cathartic free-for-all. It starts with a feint: a gingerly plucked bouzouki (or a bowed peacock harp, I'm not really sure they're both listed in the liner notes) and a loop of someone (singer Cotton Casino?) intoning "what, what, what . . . " Then there's an abrupt smash-cut, and strafing gunfire ping-pongs wildly while a messy concatenation of shitKoizumi Haijime's clangorous drums and Ayler-esque sax, demented bagpipes, distorted bassjostles for attention underneath. The first time I heard it, I wanted to throw my dog out the window. The next time, I decoded its internal logic and willingly succumbed to its gleeful madness. After "Psycho Buddha" 's shot of adrenaline administered directly to the heart, New Geocentric World chills a bit. "Space Age Ballad" is a fake traditional Japanese composition floating in an amniotic fluid of harmonium and devotional chanting; "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime" 's druggy undertow sounds like a summit meeting between Yoko Ono and Jason Pierce. Kawabata's chop-socky solo tumbles over Haijime's falling-down-the-stairs drums while Casino chants something whose meaning I'm sure is indeterminate even to those who speak Japanese. "You're Still Now" is the kind of hypnotic thrill ride that AMT revs up better than any band on the planet. By harnessing some of AMT's amperes into more shapely song structures, Kawabata could do for the Jap-psych underground what Kraftwerk did for German experimental rockbring a murky subcult into the light of day. But given his history, it seems likely that New Geocentric World will merely be another signpost that he'll whiz by without even looking back."-Marc Weingarten New York Press Volume 14, Issue 33 "The musical colors that make up Acid Mothers Temple have exposed themselves to me as brightly as day-glo acid rain, opening my eyes like a good two-day brain-melt on Orange Sunshine. The fact that theyıre Japanese only makes them more exotic. After all, they could have been Shonen Knife, or even Guitar Wolf, but they chose to become something so much more. Due to the experiments of searing ax-blasters like KK Null, as well as the gushing windchime-cum-Avalon Ballroom ı66 effects of Ghost, the Japanese have established themselves as premium psych merchants, and Acid Mothers Temple is knee-deep in the foggy blare. Take the opener, "Psycho Buddha," for instance: this is primal caterwaul of the most extreme variety, a sonic wind tunnel of rolling smog with pieces of flesh flailing around and ending up in your mouth. Strangely enough, to me it sounds a lot more harmonious than any of that hiphop blarenow thatıs noise. Despite the chaotic atmosphere of this track, itıs remarkably "together." Whereas some "noise" excursions come off like studious examples, all stiff formality, this is organicnot to mention orgasmiclike all true psychedelic music should be. The 12-piece ensemble here offers up everything from great carved-out guitar-noise sculptures to ultra-weird vocal-chant murk to skidding feedback to pounding percussive madness to, in this song, something that sounds like bagpipes. This track is more than 20 minutes long and thatıs just the beginningevery track deserves to be heralded. "Space Age Ballad" is a weird pastiche of unraveling folk combined with escalating swirls of hallucinatory tumult and ancient-sounding chants. With such a large ensemble, the Acid Mothers can utilize a wide variety of eclectic contraptions such as violin, tenor and soprano sax, bazouki and some instruments with names so weird I have to wonder if theyıre putting us on (although I think I know what "mescalina" means). "Youıre Still Now Near Me Everytime" comes the closest of anything Iıve ever heard to evoking the ultra-warped parallel universe of the first two Amon Duul II albums. Donıt play this for schizos or manic depressives, but acid-eaters are all right (especially if theyıre the type oı nebes who consider groups like Phish to be appropriate lysergic accompaniment.) Thereıs a lot of maddening oscillator swirl on this album, and a lot of sheer over-the-top guitar indulgence. Sheet upon sheet of rippling guitar is piled up to produce virtual landscapes of sound. Like the Brian Jonestown Massacre and their "mod" affectations, these guys actually transcend their musical and spiritual rootsbecause there are damn few 60s psych LPs that sound as whacked-out as this. The aforementioned Amon Duul, maybe the first two Red Krayolas, some ESP stuffotherwise, this is in a class of its own. Yoko Ono in her original formulation might be the spiritual godmother to these guys. In fact, if La Monte Young and Tony Conrad had gotten mixed up with Yoko instead of the Velvet Underground, it mightıve come out sounding something like "Universe of Romance." "Occie Lady" is outright aggro-roar on a Fun House level with lots of Ron Asheton-like strokes of madly fluctuating wah-wah. At one point about five minutes into this deafening opus the guitars open up and cry just like Ashetonıs or Blue Cheerıs Leigh Stephenıs did. "Mellow Hollow Love" is an opus in two parts, the first a somber piano thing that is the sparsest moment on the LP. Occurring when it does, after the sonic sandblast of "Occie Lady," itıs almost soothing. It leads into another semi-acoustic mantra, this one punctuated by almost Arabic-sounding emissions from the bazouki or some other odd instrument from the bandıs arsenal. As far as psych-folk goes, this is the best thing to come along since the P.G. Six album a few months back. "What Do I Want To Know (Like Heavenly Kisses Part 2)," the closer, is a droning piece of post-apocalyptic hover-sprawl that gently eases into its own well-planned demise. What more could you ask? If any new album demands your attention, itıs this one. Come along if you dare."-Joe Harrington Mojo, December 2001 CONCERT REVIEW The Spitz, London "I've spent too many years lamenting the fact that when the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd toured the nation's clubs, I was still in short trousers. Now, I don't really care. That's because Acid Mothers Temple, vanguardistas of the thrill-packed Japanese underground, are probably the ultimate acid-rock musical trip. That such a claim is possible some 35 years after the first San Francisco Trips Festival might seem extraordinary but like work, war and washing socks, it seems psychedelia just won't go away. Don't imagine that AMT are comfy revivalists. They're the most convincing crusaders for music-as-intoxication you could possibly hope for. As spellbindingly intense as Nirvana, yet as vast and as exploratory as Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Amon Duul, Miles Davis and This Heat at their respective peaks, Acid Mothers deliver an extraordinary blend of visceral electric overload and sonic telepathy that's unlike anything I've ever heard. Or indeed seen. There's an element of Magic Band excitability about the way they twitch and bend, like unruly reeds in a hurricane. More than that, though, all five musicians perform as if hypnotized by their own creations. As if it's not enough having your ears filled with psychedelic stew, the vision of five flexible figures rolling and (in guitarist Makoto Kawabata's case) tumbling in harmony with the spectacular sonic undulations gives the impression that AMT music is merely a vessel for attaining a higher state of consciousness, music ripped from the bowels of the imagination. I promise you, it wasn't the drugs. AMT shuffle on and pick up their instruments. Then they start to play. It's hardly a song, but a sensation, a torrent of whorling sound that carries the crowd, Dorothy-like, into a sonic Oz-land. Eventually, the assault ebbs and a delicate compelling guitar arpeggio spills out of the melee, signaling that we are indeed listening to "Pink Lady Lemonade". Over the course of the next hour, the mesmerizing refrain (reminiscent of PiL's "Poptones") is revisited a couple of times, punctuating some of the most fearsome, hypnotic, gifted, extreme jamming ever conceived. Think the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" performed with knives. With all senses catapulted into overload, the figures on-stage take on almost mythic proportions. Center stage, the spidery Cotton Casino hunches fiendishly over her synth, teasing out "Space Ritual"-style interstellar sounds (and hints of vocal) with devilish abandon. Flanked either side of her are the AMT guitarists. Higashi Hiroshi, a Dave Brock look-a-like in a Flowerpot Men hat, resembles a renegade monk who's traded in a life of piety for a Telecaster and a bag of magic mushrooms. The third and most crucial frontline member is lead guitarist Kawabata, the band's Jerry Garcia figure. Like Hiroshi, he's spectacularly hirsute, bearded and with a long mop of crinkle-cut black hair. Like Hendrix, he plays with charisma and intensity, his feet rooted to a a raft of FX pedals, his guitar played on his head, behind his back, on the floor. And yet watching him drive the sensational swell of sound with surges of majestically timed lysergic soloing, he manages to make Jimi seem as static as Bill Wyman. After about an hour, the sound grinds to a halt. It's a rude awakening, like the click of a hypnotist's fingers. Bassist Atsushi Tsuyama leads the band into the a cappella intro to "La Novia", a couple of minutes' throat-singing that's a somber respite from the instrumental excess. Then the wind tunnel of sound starts up again. I scribble a hasty "Zep, Stooges, Blue Cheer -- Ha!" to remind me that the behemoths of outsider rock couldn't hold a fairy candle to Acid Mothers Temple at this stage in the band's career, before the night ends with an ungodly deconstruction of "Born To Be Wild". Truly unbelievable. Bring the Japanoise."-Mark Paytress Village Voice March 26, 2002 "Today's Japanese acid-rock revival is a droning ritual of offhand eclecticism and eternal repetition a la Germany 30 years ago; while guitar genius Kawabata Makoto's traveling Nagoya commune might not match the pastoral beauty of Ghost or Angel'in Heavy Syrup, they're still the heavy legends of the bunch, and way more pastorally beautiful than their inspirations Blue Cheer or the Mothers of Invention ever were. If you'd had a chance to see Amon Duul in 1970, you would've gone, right?"-Chuck Eddy LA Weekly 7-13, 2001 "When fabulously furry freak brother/Acid Mothers Temple guitarist-leader Makoto Kawabata said recently, "I now believe what I do is pick up various sounds from the cosmos, like a radio receiver, and then simply try to reproduce these sounds so that everyone can hear them," he wasnıt kidding. In the space of a single live set, or on any of this Japanese mystic collectiveıs epic albums (the newest is New Geocentric World on Squealer), the five-to-30-piece Acid Mothers can be counted on to zoom across all the cosmosı psychedelic sounds white noise, blacklight drones, folk spirituals, superchurning acid-rock workouts, etc. with the practiced ease of veteran galactic adventure-seekers. This showıs micro-tiny venue, probably the smallest on the bandıs current "We Are Here" U.S. trek, means that the audience will practically be in the Acid Mothershipıs cockpit."-Jay Babcock Chicago Reader September 7-13, 2001 "The sentiment prevails even in indie-experimental circles that the venerable Japanese heavy-psychedelic scene is way out over the edge of listenability, the very definition of obscure--just about everything short of "inscrutable." It would be nice if the appearance of Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.--the big, marvelous communal venture loosely led by guitar giant Makoto Kawabata of Musica Transonic--on the cover of the latest issue of the Wire did something to dispel that perception, but I'm afraid nothing will do that, short of more exposure to the music itself. It is admittedly uneasy listening, but that's how psychedelic music should be. Hallucinogens, after all, are not relaxing drugs, and startling attacks of visionary surrealism are not comforting experiences. But devotees of serious, uncut psychedelia can find a lot to love about Acid Mothers Temple's new album, New Geocentric World, issued in the US by the Virginia-based label Squealer. Predictably it packs a few hair-raising electric freak-outs--think Xtreme Hawkwind--but balances them with eerie echoing space loveliness and touches that call to mind various other highlights of the history of head music: vocalist Haco's singing on "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime," for example, reminds me a bit of the early dark-psych incarnation of Siouxsie Sioux, and the intro to "Occie Lady" does Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" one better in terms of sheer warrior crunch. Parts of the club set should be loud as God, and Plastic Crimewave & the Fake, a new local band featuring sometime Acid Mothers collaborator Steve Krakow, opens; the in-store gig the following afternoon is supposed to be acoustic."-Monica Kendrick Fakejazz.com 9/14/01 "I would venture to say that the lion's share of extremity in virtually every facet of music festers and spews forth from the fertile caverns of the Japanese underground. Upon learning that West Japan's Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. subtitle themselves as "A Freak-Out Group For the 21st Century," the fantastic track record of fully freaked independent rock/noise/psychedelia/anything from the Land of the Rising Sun precludes that you must allot them the benefit of the doubt, even before taking the Acid Test for yourself. Venturing into the elaborate funhouse of the Acid Mothers Temple, the walls melt, the colors explode, all aspects of reality are gloriously exaggerated... and the dizzying music which erupts in rapturous red-hot lava flows is absolutely astounding. Toting their most recent edition in an already prolific and steadily ongoing supersonic odyssey, New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple is Acid Mothers Temple's first proper US domestic CD release. Formed in 1996 Kawabata Makoto (Mainliner, Toho Sara) as a communal collective of kindred spirits, the whole modus operandi of Acid Mothers Temple's elaborate vision is to merge the disparate worlds of heavy psyche rock, a la Blue Cheer, Gong, and Hawkwind, with the electronic compositional aesthetic of Stockhausen or Terry Riley minimalism. A motley array of Kawabata solo dronescapes and Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective splinter groups keeps you guessing (and for this writer, salivating), with names like Floating Flower, Father Moo & The Black Sheep, and Nishinihon. With seven albums in Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal to date, each release differs remarkably from the other, keeping the prolific nature of the band devoid of any redundancy. Aiming squarely for the outer reaches of the cosmos, each shudder from Acid Mothers Temple makes it into orbit every time. New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple, while not the band's most unique trough of cosmic slop (save that distinction for Absolutely Freak-Out (Zap Your Mind) on Resonant/Static Caravaan and La Novia on Eclipse/Swordfish), it is perhaps their most well-rounded and representational offering for the otherwise uninitiated, and certainly succeeds in serving up a potent dosage of audio microdot. Unleashing a dense, fire-breathing paisley demon, "Psycho Buddha" throttles you from the get-go. The 21 minute leadoff tune curdles under a deep overdriven swirl of sound, engulfed in massive layers of guitars, synths, bagpipes, shrieks, the kitchen sink... a scalding cauldron o' fury! And that's the first half of the tune... roughly into the second half some extreme guitar shrapnel surfaces, hurled from the depths, blistering from every acid lick known to humans, or possibly DMT-drenched alien hippies. This colorfast undertow harkens to the speed freak blast of their debut self-titled album and the overdriven bombast of Mainliner, drenched in every pigment of the rainbow. After ravaging you from every angle, Acid Mothers Temple spit you out into the floating headspace of "Space Age Ballad," a weightless hallucination in which crystalline spirits beckon from their incense-laced netherworld. Harmonium and keyboards sweeten the tea over muted acoustic guitars. Lava lamp burbling, the hall of mirrors warps into "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime," a lilting hookah hit a la Amon Duul II delivered via the psychedelic soul of AMT Soul Collective nomad Haco. Ghostly vocals, chiming guitar, and oscillating gurgles lay the blueprint for some great wah-fuzz guitar banter from Kawabata. Drunk on sound, Acid Mothers Temple guide the trip into mutated traditional mountain-folk spheres with "Universe of Romance." Picking up splinters from La Novia, AMT's astounding, extended acid jam interpretation of Octavian folk music, this tune huzzes and billows under a traditional line on acoustic guitar with some mescaline chants soaring through the mix. Thus setting the mood, Kawabata unsheathes his sword and proceeds to behead us all with "Occie Lady," a louder-than-fuck Blue Cheer/MC5 LSD vomit, sending Vincebus Eurptum and Kick Out the Jams through the cheese grater once and for all, electronic flourishes in tow. Cutting out to some reverbed Jandek-on-piano noodlings, Acid Mothers Temple mercifully come down from the trip in fractured fashion. "Mellow Hollow Love" fluffs up the throw pillow for the impending burnout. Quietly stroking the acoustic guitar, this psyche-folk nugget is a gilded treasure, gleaming as celestial vocals croon under bleeping synthesizer emissions. Suspended in afterburn is the incredible closer "What Do I Want To Know (Like Heavenly Kisses Part 2)", a minimalist comet's tail streaking across the mind, blazing a trail into inner transcendence. This is a droning window unto higher consciousness, a gentle glacier filled with synthesizer harmonics and microtones. Quiet electric guitar hums and strums close it out on a contented, peaceful note. Modern psychedelia is alive and vibrant. Terrastock nation's freak flag is flying high, channeling the ghost of the Avalon Ballroom of the 60s or Cologne, Germany of the 70s with a tasty array of excellent bands like Ghost or Bardo Pond. None are exaggerating classic psyche-rock/folk into such cartoon-like fantasy, in every conceivable manner, like Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO. By all accounts, AMT live up to their billing, "A Freak-Out Group For the 21st Century," but not by doing so flippantly. The members of Acid Mothers Temple are the real deal, certified organic, making music harvested from the absolute fringes of their very lives In the end, it's the absolute genius of their music, cutting through the din of the lysergic cacophony, which matters. New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple, again while not their most concentrated dose, is nonetheless fantastic sermon, expounded from the day-glo pulpit of sage Kawabata Makoto and Co. If you haven't experimented with them yet, this is a nice clean tab for your first Acid Test. If you have, well, what are you waiting for? A lovely labyrinth of sound awaits..."-Chris Scofield Pop Matters, 2001 Careful with That Cornemuse, Eugene "Kawabata Makoto of the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective once said, 'Since I was a small child I have been prone to hearing ringing sounds in my ears and other sound phantasms. At the time, I believed that these were messages aimed directly at me from a UFO, and so I would gaze up at the sky. But once I started playing music myself, I came to feel that these noises were a kind of pure sound. And I promised myself that one day I would be able to play those sounds myself'. This latest release from Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO is another expression of frontman Makoto's primal encounter with sonic otherness, and it certainly leaves listeners with "ringing sounds" in their ears. Said sounds range from the subtly atmospheric and mystical -- perhaps the kind that first inspired Makoto -- to the sort of ringing that results from an overexposure to extreme volume. Combining moments of ethereal melody with absurdly over-the-top noise-mongering, this album is par for the course for the Japanese band that -- in the late 20th century -- called itself 'a freak-out group for the 21st century'. Elvis Costello once said that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' (a concept that doesn't really seem that implausible now). That statement may be open to multiple interpretations, but taken as a simple expression of the difficulties posed by representing music's affect in linguistic terms, it seems entirely appropriate when trying to characterize the sound of Acid Mothers Temple. To use a historically pertinent idiom, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO are "out there" -- "far out", to extend the metaphor -- treading a fine line between absolute folly and sheer genius. At the same time as their sound suggests a contemporary Japanese translation of '60s big-guitar acid rock and psychedelia (Cream, Blue Cheer, and Hendrix), it also incorporates early '70s Germanic experimentalism of the Faust variety, all manner of noise -- from spacey, sci-fi synths to searing feedback and distortion -- and elements of traditional Occitan and Japanese folk music, performed with acoustic instruments. For the uninitiated, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO are but one manifestation of a greater phenomenon, the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective, which comprises 30 or so musicians, dancers, artists, and, according to their Web site, "farmers, etc". Based principally in Nagoya, the collective centers around guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Makoto, who, since the late '70s, has been a prolific presence in the Japanese psychedelic and experimental scenes, working simultaneously on numerous projects. In addition to forming Baroque Bordello in 1978, between 1984 and 1992 he performed with Erochika and, in the late '80s, worked with the avant-garde psych group Hedik (other members of which would reappear in the Boredoms). 1995 saw the formation of Toho Sara (with Asahito Nanjo of High Rise) as well as the self-described "improvisational power trio" Musica Transonic, which included Nanjo and Ruins drummer Yoshida Tatsuya. And as if that weren't enough, Makoto also joined Nanjo in Mainliner, another group that was put together in 1996. 1996 was also the year that Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO came into being. Since then, they've released a number of albums including Pataphisical Freak Out MU!!, Troubadours from Another Heavenly World, Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind!), and Wild Gals a Go-Go, the soundtrack for an as-yet unreleased -- and quite possibly apocryphal -- underground Russian film by Ivan Piskov. For The New Geocentric World Of, the band consists of 12 participants. In addition to Makoto, the familiar core members are Tsuyama Atsushi (bass, or, to be precise, that would be "monster bass"), Higashi Hiroshi (synthesizer/guitar), Ichiraku Yoshimitsu (drums), and Cotton Casino (synthesizer). Alongside them, there's a cast of lesser known characters credited with contributing or simply being -- it's not entirely clear -- everything from "erotic underground" and "cheesecake" to "sleeping monk" and "kendo". And, of course, the group even has its own guru, the mysterious Father Moo. Such unabashed silliness is excusable, however, when you make the kind of brilliant noise that Acid Mothers Temple do. Bearing in mind that in 1977 the English punk band Wire had reduced the rock song to 28 seconds with "Field Day for the Sundays", the 21-minute "Psycho Buddha" might seem like a pointlessly self-indulgent and truly dinosaurian exercise. But it's worth every second. This is a swirling vortex of textured guitar freakery, distortion, relentless pounding, Hawkwind-esque synth twittering . . . and bagpipes (cornemuse, for you specialists). This is not a wall, but a massive squall of sound. Nevertheless, there is peace at the heart of Acid Mothers Temple's sonic tempest. On "Universe of Romance", for instance, synthesizers combine with medieval-sounding vocals and traditional folk instrumentation to offer listeners a sea of tranquillity. Of course, that's just a moment of fleeting calm before another storm. The peace is shattered and the volume cranked up as the band launches into a massively distorted guitar-fest on 'Occie Lady'. And that's only the half of it. The New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple & Melting Paraiso U.F.O. might not be particularly original, but its juxtaposition and hybridization of recycled forms are highly addictive and mind-expanding. It has a weirdness so intense that this isn't so much music to trip to as music to trepan to."-Wilson Neate Creative Loafing Atlanta, March 13, 2002 Unhappy Trails: Kawabata Makoto's Acid Mother of all freakouts "Oh man, I don't believe this question!" Kawabata Makoto seems to snarl indignantly when asked by e-mail if the Japanese "soul collective" he helped found in 1996 -- Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (Underground Freak Out) -- incorporates any previously set parameters within its improvisational trip music. "There's virtually nothing fixed about Acid Mothers Temple," he asserts. "AMT is, was and should be over 90 percent improvised. The basic themes may be composed -- but after that, everything else is improvised. 'Structure' ties music down, stops it breathing." For a man who publicly proclaims a love for the WWF, little is scripted about Makoto or AMT, which currently includes Makoto on guitar, Higashi Hiroshi on synth and guitar, Uki Eiji on drums, Tsuyama Atsushi on bass and vocals, and singer Cotton Casino. "How could you think that we fix anything about our songs?" Makoto says. "As for theories, all we want to do is rock." Rock isn't everything to AMT, however. Some members of the group fish; others travel the world on spiritual quests. Communal though independent, they share houses and stages, and all attempt to live outside the realm of worldly influences. It wasn't always that way for Makoto. Growing up in Osaka in the '70s, he was exposed to everything from Deep Purple to Amon Düül to classical Indian drones. What most fascinated Makoto, however, was the prospect of combining extreme trip music with the electronic/musique concrete experiments of composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen. But when Makoto formed his first band, Ankoku Kakumei Kyodotai (Dark Revolutionary Collective), in the late '70s, the reception was cold. The group was freeform, but not free jazz. Playing noisy space rock with synths and self-tunings, DRC was stuck between no wave and new wave, yet accepted by fans of neither. So DRC dropped off the mainstream radar, releasing more than 40 independent cassettes before Makoto moved on, experimenting with musique concrete-like solo overdub pieces. Then, after stints with Musica Transonic and Mainliner, he got together with like-minded musicians who had no outlet, and Acid Mothers Temple was born. Originally little more than a means to distribute limited-edition CDs and CDRs from the pool of talented musicians surrounding Makoto, AMT was not meant to be a touring band. But there was something about the group's sound -- an extreme combination of Hawkwind, Can, the Melvins and the Velvet Underground -- that elicited international attention. "AMT is composed of rockin' fools and social dropouts," says Makoto. "Rock is a way of life that refuses compromise. [It] has nothing to do with a style of music, and everything to do with a style of living." And many things rock AMT's sonic universe -- which is as filled with sensory input as the traditional universe has stars. Disorienting frenzies of friction-strained strings over the rolling rhythmic thunder of drums (as on their latest CD, New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple); French Occitan traditional troubadour music (from La Nòvia); WWF's The Rock -- all these things come to bear in the ever-changing experience that is AMT. "In the live situation, with all our hearts and all our energy, we try to capture and re-create the music that is most fitting for that time, that place, and for the people who are together there with us," says Makoto. "And if everyone can glimpse the universal principle for even a second, then we'll be more than happy." For years, people have been saying rock is dead. AMT have always disagreed, but they're willing to play until people get a literal answer. Can you smell what the rock is cooking?"-Tony Ware Other Music Update June 13, 2001 RealAudio: http://64.27.65.90:8080/ramgen/othermusic/PsychoBu.rm "If ever I should decide to quit my job, I'd consider Acid Mothers Temple and the bands immediately splintering off their unique orbit (Mainliner, Toho Sara, Musica Transonic, etc.) as my next full-time career. So magnificent, so incredibly prolific (dozens of official releases, 100+ CD-Rs and counting) I would happily become lost in their vortex of psychedelic sonic bliss. As their roadie, I would tend their instruments, fetch them yogurt and learn to braid their hair. Guitarist Makoto Kawabata would be my guru and I'd sell incense and bumper stickers. We'd never have to travel in a van, not even between cities of close proximity, because Acid Mothers Temple fly everywhere. And when I'm old, this CD will remain a distant but happy memory but at least my children will know I was somebody. Yeah."-Jeff Gibson CD Now Web Site July 10, 2001 "Acid Mothers Temple is a Japanese band that have issued many releases around the world, but this, their eighth full-length, is the first CD release readily available in the US Acid Mothers Temple is a collective of musicians, mystics, dancers, poets, freaks, and hangers on. It's led by masterful guitarist/speed guru (who also plays violin, synth, bouzouki, and more on this release) -- Kawabata Makoto. While the band has touched down to Earth long enough to record, they seem to be constantly touring the world; a band of psychedelic space troubadours if there ever was one. Kawabata is joined by his usual conspirators on New Geocentric World, and together they make a heady, bubbling acid brew. Things start off with the super overload of "Psycho Buddha," a hard rocking, noisy blast of shrieking guitars, washes of space sounds, and free jazz style drumming. The track gets more and more out as it stretches to the marathon lengths of 21 minutes. After the exhaustion that inevitably follows listening to the first track, things mellow out a bit. "Space Age Love Ballad" is pretty much truth in advertising. As melodica sounds go through echo chambers, some simple guitar plucking fills up the empty space as mumbled vocals slide under and around the music -- the polar opposite of the opening onslaught. The laid back vibe continues with "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime," one of the more standard Acid Mothers tracks. The basic minor key guitar parts are filled-in with analogue synth sounds and scattered percussion. But the real treat is female vocalist Haco's lush and gorgeous stylings, bringing to mind a mix of Siouxsie or Liz Frazier of the Cocteau Twins, as the tune stretches to ten-plus minutes of soothing psych. From here, we enter "Universe of Romance," a bouzouki, synth, sitar, and voice piece that swirls from ear to ear as the acoustic instruments flow into the drones of the synthesizer. Some folky vocals chant and ebb around the buzzing clouds of the tune, as things get weirder and weirder it's about as good an introduction to "acid folk" as one can get. As the final buzzes start to fly faster, the next tune, "Occie Lady," starts out with a huge wash of guitar and things are off. It's the absolute night to the previous song's day, as heavy guitars crash into wailing synths and caterwauling drums for an over-the-top effect. This is about as close as Acid Mothers Temple come to other Japanese hard psych bands like Mainliner (whom Kawabata also plays in) and High Rise, while still maintaining their acid edge through the maelstrom of noise and guitar solos that take off and fly to the sun and clouds. Things detonate as the recording levels are jacked through the roof and the song gets to an exhausting super riff buildup before dissolving into a post-explosion hazy drone that leads to a super-mellow piano coda as the song trails off. The remaining two songs add more the hippy mystique of Acid Mothers Temple, including some more touches of their gorgeous acid folk spiked with electronics, as well as a final closing drone piece that stretches to fifteen-plus minutes: Perfect for when you need to levitate over to the CD player to change it."-Andy Perseponko From Aural Innovations #19 (April 2002) "On this, one of their many current releases, Acid Mothers Temple come across as the definitive Japanese version of the Cosmic Jokers, taking the sounds of Hawkwind, Gong, Amon Düül II, Ashra Tempel and Blue Cheer and infecting it all with new personalities and an inherent Japanese penchant for noise, creating some inspiring space-rock for the new millenium. However the opening track "Psycho Buddha" defies all band references, at least as far as I'm able to conjure. The intensity level for the full 20 minutes is beyond anything I've ever heard or tried to describe before... "Blanga" doesn't even come close. There is almost a "beat" but the drums are rolling and all you can really make out is a storm of snare and cymbals... how this joker ever managed to thrash it out like this evades me, and it's almost drowned out by every classic freak-out sound imaginable anyway... swirling synth, squonk-sax, space-whisper (though more like screams and at times difficult to distinguish from guitar feedback) and bagpipe sounds totally blitz the listener. This is so over-the-top, giving it the definitive "thumbs-up" is difficult, though headphones are an asset as the synth takes to an astral stereo mind-fuck. No build-up... ends the way it begins. God, but it's so devoted, there is something beautiful in it. It's hard to believe anyone would be so brash as this. Kudos for trying to break the mold! The pure dreamy '60s psyche of "Space Age Ballad" follows with repeating hypnotic organ lines, allowing the listener to take a few breaths. Actually nothing comes close to the same kind of intensity of "Psycho Buddha" again, fortunately. "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime" is a slow-driving Kosmiche-jam, with a jangling '60s guitar riff, distant unintelligable female vocals and nice use of cosmic 'tronics... and it actually has a couple time-changes! Half-way into it the guitar starts to solo rather amateurishly, though the synth continues to twitter blissfully. "Far Out", says the Freak-O-Meter. "Universe of Romance" is a dreary medieval guitar piece contrasted with clean spectrum-crossing space-synth that gestates in your belly and exits high in your head like something from F/i's Grant Richter, the ancient and futuristic elements combining beautifully. But then you're ambushed by "Occie Lady", an insane bluesy stoner-rock blitz, so noisy that the rhythm guitar just crumbles, the synths splatter with abandon and Kawabata solos like an inept Hendrix. It actually works pretty well... though the tuneless meandering solo piano bit that closes the tune is unnecessary, even if it teases to become Hawkwind's "One Change" for a moment before falling off the edge again. "Mellow Hollow Love" is another brief medieval space-age ballad with a nice enough organ melody but is sabotaged by intrusive, random, annoying synth-bleats. Closing track "What Do I Want To Know" is a lengthy droning harmonium-meditation piece that towards the end displays a gentle touch and restraint that is the antithesis of the maximal "Psycho Buddha"... a reverbed guitar that just exhales a simple lovely lullabye melody. A few weak spots, but highly recommended!"-Chuck Rosenberg Pitchfork
Web Zine October 3, 2001 "Japan is a strange place for music, a cauldron of underground activity which continually threatens to bubble to the surface and vanquish the world of rock once and for all. Very few of these underground artists have made a name for themselves on American shores (Boredoms, Melt-Banana, Ruins), but the number of artists that continue to ply their craft continues to mount, all the while unbeknownst to us poor souls across the Pacific. At the forefront of this underground movement is guitarist Makoto Kawabata and the noise freaks of Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO (short for "Underground Freak Out"). A self-described "millennial hippy group," Acid Mothers Temple have been traveling the world, unleashing their particular brand of psychedelic bliss upon an unwitting public for four years. Releasing three albums early in their career on the Japanese underground label, PSF, the group slowly built a name for itself, specializing in what Kawabata termed "trip" music. It's a meltdown of entire genres and movements-- drawing equally from French folk and Western psychedelia-- all re-imagined in a form intended to liquefy your brain. Part of a community known as the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective, Kawabata and friends have been inhabiting the Japanese countryside and living out their own unique brand of utopianism for the last few years. Recalling the countercultural spirit of the 60's and other hippie communes, Acid Mothers even paid homage to that Californian group of restaurant-owning weirdos, Ya Ho Wha 13, with the album The Father Moo and the Black Sheep. But with this, their first release on Massachusetts' Squealer label, Acid Mothers Temple finally free the rein on their noise parade. I'm not sure if the Acid Mothers are trying to win any converts with their most recent offering, but the make-or-break point (if you will) for potential fans will undoubtedly come at 40 seconds into The New Geocentric World, as "Psycho Buddah" opens with the mantra, "What?," in a sound loop that teases the listener into thinking they've brought home some of that experimental locked-groove wankery. But a few seconds later, the Acid Mothers annihilate all preconceived notions. Dissecting the cacophony, the intense sonic war being waged on human ears, is futile. Best to sit back and let your brain bleed. I asked to hear this at the local record shop, and within one minute of the first track, people had either fled with fingers plugging their ears, or were completely rapt and entrenched within a new world of sonic dimensions. "Psycho Buddah" is unrelenting, moving at a furious pace for over 21 minutes and incorporating Kawabata's searing guitar work within the steady framework of the Acid Mothers' thunderous rhythm section. Cotton Casino, the group's only female, constantly pushes the gurgles, loops, drones and hisses of her synthesizer into the forefront. The song teeters on a hazardous precipice, looking over the edge and waiting to fall, but Kawabata's guitar is the anchor here, effortlessly able to rein all the others into his sonic realm. His ability to create deafening walls of feedback, hiss, and skronk, coupled with his penchant for tearing it all to shreds with a seething solo, is a thing of pure, unadulterated beauty. I'll say it right now: Kawabata is a guitar god. And these other guys are no slouches, either, as they prove while seamlessly incorporating bagpipes (!) and Jew's harps (!!) into this freeform freakout without ever looking back. The next track, "Space Age Ballad," is a haunting acoustic number that recalls contemporaries Ghost and their psychedelic balladry. Comparatively short at four minutes, this track is mere preparation for the slow-burning "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime." Guest vocalist Haco remains the focal point for the first minutes of the song until, at around the five-minute mark, Kawabata emerges with yet another guitar solo-- a trend on each track so far. A bit tiring? For your average indie rock band, yeah. But this is psychedelic madness, and the sheer joy and inventiveness with which Kawabata plays puts most of his contemporaries to shame, and his willingness to explore every possible dimension of sound succeeds with a creation of textures that seem wholly original. Unafraid to don their cartoon masks as well, Acid Mothers unveil their frenetic update on Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" with the scorching "Occie Lady," a pounding, speedfreak revision that subsumes Hendrix's riff within a mountainous din of thuds, screeches, and shrieking guitar. The closing track is a pure departure from everything preceding, abandoning the blistering guitarwork and crashing rhythm sections for a 15-minute drone workout. Here, Kawabata's guitar and the song's multi-layered structure evokes the theatrics of My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. Acid Mothers Temple pride themselves on the drughead obsession of being "cosmic troubadours" in continual search for interstellar communication. But unlike the shoegazers with which their music has so much in common, Makoto Kawabata sincerely believes he's communicating with the cosmos. A strange guy to be sure, but most great musicians are given to some eccentricities." -Luke Buckman The Guardian-Friday October 5, 2001 " Most homegrown forms of Japanese rock and pop have proved too alien for western ears: you'd be hard pressed to find many fans of group sounds or lolitapop in the UK. But Japanese artists have proved adept at taking British and American genres, distilling their essence into potent, concentrated music, and selling the results back to gobsmacked western audiences. Punk bands like the splendidly named Ass Fort are the most ferocious in the world. Easy-listening acts Plastic Fantastic Machine and Pizzicato Five are implausibly suave and slick. And Japanese experimental music is truly unhinged, as anyone who has endured Merzbow's racket will testify. In cultural terms, it's not surprising to find a Japanese band playing a heady brand of psychedelia 35 years after the summer of love, but it's difficult not to be stunned by the actual music of Acid Mothers Temple. Tonight's 50-minute set, part of the South Bank's psychedelic festival Mind Your Head, includes just two lengthy tracks, the first taken from La Novia, one of seven albums issued by the Nagoya-based quintet in the past three years. Yet it manages to encompass deranged guitar soloing, a brief parody of central-Asian throat-singing, jazz-inspired impro, Japanese folk and the clipped rhythmical precision of Krautrock. More remarkably, it never slips into humourless self- indulgence or pomposity. The playing, particularly from lead guitarist Makoto Kawabata , is visceral and gripping, shifting from gentle harmonies to ear-rupturing noise. For all their long hair and flared trousers, the collective's music has little to do with the hackneyed cosiness of psychedelia's past. Rather than looking back, they translate its spirit of wild experimentation into the 21st century. The results are challenging, utterly unique. Hidden behind a wall of hair, Kawabata throws himself (and, eventually, his guitar) around with abandon. Bass player Tsuyama Atsushi growls incomprehensibly into his mike. Cotton Casino, a tiny girl with a synthesiser, waves sweetly during the set's quieter moments. The audience, here for the Orb's easily digestible ambience and the comforting retrospection of 1970s veterans Gong, do not wave back."-Alexis Petridis Fakejazz.com-Sept. 14, 2001 "I would venture to say that the lion's share of extremity in virtually every facet of music festers and spews forth from the fertile caverns of the Japanese underground. Upon learning that West Japan's Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. subtitle themselves as "A Freak-Out Group For the 21st Century," the fantastic track record of fully freaked independent rock/noise/psychedelia/anything from the Land of the Rising Sun precludes that you must allot them the benefit of the doubt, even before taking the Acid Test for yourself. Venturing into the elaborate funhouse of the Acid Mothers Temple, the walls melt, the colors explode, all aspects of reality are gloriously exaggerated... and the dizzying music which erupts in rapturous red-hot lava flows is absolutely astounding. Toting their most recent edition in an already prolific and steadily ongoing supersonic odyssey, New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple is Acid Mothers Temple's first proper US domestic CD release. Formed in 1996 Kawabata Makoto (Mainliner, Toho Sara) as a communal collective of kindred spirits, the whole modus operandi of Acid Mothers Temple's elaborate vision is to merge the disparate worlds of heavy psyche rock, a la Blue Cheer, Gong, and Hawkwind, with the electronic compositional aesthetic of Stockhausen or Terry Riley minimalism. A motley array of Kawabata solo dronescapes and Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective splinter groups keeps you guessing (and for this writer, salivating), with names like Floating Flower, Father Moo & The Black Sheep, and Nishinihon. With seven albums in Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal to date, each release differs remarkably from the other, keeping the prolific nature of the band devoid of any redundancy. Aiming squarely for the outer reaches of the cosmos, each shudder from Acid Mothers Temple makes it into orbit every time. New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple, while not the band's most unique trough of cosmic slop (save that distinction for Absolutely Freak-Out (Zap Your Mind) on Resonant/Static Caravaan and La Novia on Eclipse/Swordfish), it is perhaps their most well-rounded and representational offering for the otherwise uninitiated, and certainly succeeds in serving up a potent dosage of audio microdot. Unleashing a dense, fire-breathing paisley demon, "Psycho Buddha" throttles you from the get-go. The 21 minute leadoff tune curdles under a deep overdriven swirl of sound, engulfed in massive layers of guitars, synths, bagpipes, shrieks, the kitchen sink... a scalding cauldron o' fury! And that's the first half of the tune... roughly into the second half some extreme guitar shrapnel surfaces, hurled from the depths, blistering from every acid lick known to humans, or possibly DMT-drenched alien hippies. This colorfast undertow harkens to the speed freak blast of their debut self-titled album and the overdriven bombast of Mainliner, drenched in every pigment of the rainbow. After ravaging you from every angle, Acid Mothers Temple spit you out into the floating headspace of "Space Age Ballad," a weightless hallucination in which crystalline spirits beckon from their incense-laced netherworld. Harmonium and keyboards sweeten the tea over muted acoustic guitars. Lava lamp burbling, the hall of mirrors warps into "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime," a lilting hookah hit a la Amon Duul II delivered via the psychedelic soul of AMT Soul Collective nomad Haco. Ghostly vocals, chiming guitar, and oscillating gurgles lay the blueprint for some great wah-fuzz guitar banter from Kawabata. Drunk on sound, Acid Mothers Temple guide the trip into mutated traditional mountain-folk spheres with "Universe of Romance." Picking up splinters from La Novia, AMT's astounding, extended acid jam interpretation of Octavian folk music, this tune huzzes and billows under a traditional line on acoustic guitar with some mescaline chants soaring through the mix. Thus setting the mood, Kawabata unsheathes his sword and proceeds to behead us all with "Occie Lady," a louder-than-fuck Blue Cheer/MC5 LSD vomit, sending Vincebus Eruptum and Kick Out the Jams through the cheese grater once and for all, electronic flourishes in tow. Cutting out to some reverbed Jandek-on-piano noodlings, Acid Mothers Temple mercifully come down from the trip in fractured fashion. "Mellow Hollow Love" fluffs up the throw pillow for the impending burnout. Quietly stroking the acoustic guitar, this psyche-folk nugget is a gilded treasure, gleaming as celestial vocals croon under bleeping synthesizer emissions. Suspended in afterburn is the incredible closer "What Do I Want To Know (Like Heavenly Kisses Part 2)", a minimalist comet's tail streaking across the mind, blazing a trail into inner transcendence. This is a droning window unto higher consciousness, a gentle glacier filled with synthesizer harmonics and microtones. Quiet electric guitar hums and strums close it out on a contented, peaceful note. Modern psychedelia is alive and vibrant. Terrastock nation's freak flag is flying high, channeling the ghost of the Avalon Ballroom of the 60s or Cologne, Germany of the 70s with a tasty array of excellent bands like Ghost or Bardo Pond. None are exaggerating classic psyche-rock/folk into such cartoon-like fantasy, in every conceivable manner, like Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO. By all accounts, AMT live up to their billing, "A Freak-Out Group For the 21st Century," but not by doing so flippantly. The members of Acid Mothers Temple are the real deal, certified organic, making music harvested from the absolute fringes of their very lives In the end, it's the absolute genius of their music, cutting through the din of the lysergic cacophony, which matters. New Geocentric World of Acid Mothers Temple, again while not their most concentrated dose, is nonetheless fantastic sermon, expounded from the day-glo pulpit of sage Kawabata Makoto and Co. If you haven't experimented with them yet, this is a nice clean tab for your first Acid Test. If you have, well, what are you waiting for? A lovely labyrinth of sound awaits..."-Chris Scofield Ink 19-October 2001 "When's the last time you saw long hair, longer beards, and kaftans on the cover of Wire Magazine? Yeppers, congratulation to Acid Mothers Temple for making the masthead of creative music's most uptight but informative print publication. An awesome accomplishment for a band that so clearly favors a more instinctive and even childlike style of head/heart music over the more academic and well-planned ventures that the Wire usually throws its not inconsiderable resources behind. Pick that issue up, it's got some great photos and quotes from this mystical collective. New Geocentric World, however, is an altogether more difficult proposition to get your head around than snapshots of hirsute Japanese mystics. It shouldn't be this way, y'know, music this natural should be reacted to and experienced, instead of worried over. The proof is in the tunes. A track like opening 27-minute total hippie freak out "Psycho Buddha" is a free spazz call to arms, pick up an instrument, blow baby blow, flick the lights on and off, just lie back, don't you even think about stroking your chin. Scary and life-affirming at the same time. But the Acid Mothers care about you (and me) and your mental health, so they follow it immediately with the elegantly simple mantra idyll of "Space Age Ballad." Almost a hymn, man. Then comes the crazy Yoko and Hawkwind interstellar jam of "You're Still Near Me Everything." So fucking heavy, jesus, you'll be scratching your eyeballs out in perfect joy. Maybe coming close to this kind of music is what drove Kevin Shields insane. Next up is "Universe Of Romance" reaching the edge of the universe built around an ancient Eastern folk melody and your speakers panning in and out. What was that movie about the sensory deprivation tank? "Occie Lady" is an insane Fillmore East 3 AM garage punk jam that rages all over your Jefferson Airplane bootlegs. Next up is the sweetly cloying "Mellon Hollow Love" that conjures up the ghosts of... um... Ghost. Remember Ghost? They were fucking cool; but this song is fucking cooler. And the whole thing ends with the consciousness-shattering blowout of "What Do I Want to Know (Heavenly Kisses Vol. 2)" that steamrolls over you with brutal ambience, before imperceptibly fading into delicate little diamond waves, pulsing in and out, slowly waving goodbye. The sound of thee infinite. It will kill you and bring you back to life again."-Matthew Moyer High Bias Web Zine "More of a collective than a stable band, Japan's Acid Mothers Temple brings the far-out sounds of a good old fashioned acid freakout into the 21st century. Organized around guitarist Kawabata Makoto in 1996 and featuring over 30 revolving members, the group finds the middle ground between their Nipponese cohorts High Rise (amphetaminized garage rock) and Ghost (pastoral acid folk). Middle ground doesn't mean middle of the road, however. High volume guitars that cross Cream-era Clapton with Sonny Sharrock bump up against serene Japanese flutes, while analog synths share space with almost subliminal chanting, like monks at Money Mark session. Percussion flourishes range from ornamental to pounding. Songs like "Space Age Ballad" and "Universe of Romance" are surpassingly lovely, while "Psycho Buddha" is an improvised electric hell-ripper of the highest order. Best of all is "You're Still Now Near Me Everytime," in which the band builds from pop/folk beauty to lysergic free jazz frenzy and back again, riding the waves of sound the way dolphins ride waves. No matter how much (or how little) is going on, though, Makoto and co. manage to pull at least a semblance of melody out of the chaosthis is never a disorganized jumble. The musicians in Acid Mothers Temple make the trip so we don't have tocome listen to their fascinating travelogue."- Michael Toland Amazon.com Web Site "Thank God for modern-day Japanese psychedelic bands. They master the art of freaking out the squares, then record profligate scores of new releases with a saturated vintage aura, saving crate-diggers the trouble of tracking down the original 1970s output of the Flower Travelin Band, Taj Mahal Travelers, etc. The heavily enriched Acid Mothers Temple is a backwards-falling wonderland of absent-minded whirlwinds that calm the nerves with drones and simple strings while disconnecting the brain with buzzing intrusions and dead-spirit vocals. For guitar-holocaust survivors, "Occie Lady" is like seeing Blue Cheer jam endlessly from the perspective of the Goodyear blimp, while "What Do I Want to Know (Like Heavenly Kisses Part 2)" is a symphony played by an orchestra whose players are frozen at the perpetual moment of coming into higher consciousness. Didn't we mention this is superb psychedelic music?"-Ian Christe "I like to think of the time I was talking to Joe Gross about something musical or other and I mentioned to him the latest release from Last Days of May and he said "Oh, now that's good: Shit is just blowing up." I like to think of that when I listen to this. And I like to listen to this."- Patrick Foster One Final Note issue #9 | winter 2002 " Turn on, tune in, drop out? Yes, Acid Mothers Temple updates the psychedelic experience for the new millennium in full communal glory. Comparable to the wildass hippiness of NYCıs cervically challenged troubadours the No Neck Blues Band, Acid Mothers Temple creates music as a way of life music as an experience not separated from the other rituals of daily existence, a concept that resonates as profoundly with 1960s U.S. hippie culture as it does with traditional West African societies. With phenomenal guitarist Kawabata Makoto as spiritual and musical figurehead, Acid Mothers Temple borrows liberally and equally from 60s acid rock, experimental noise, free jazz and folk music. Bleating saxophones give way to fever-dream guitar solos; gratingly layered synthesizers duke it out with medieval minstrelsy; lo-fi drones morph into Fahey-esque modal six-string ragas itıs a heady concoction, but one that ultimately succeeds despite its tendencies toward pretension (a criticism Iıll happily withdraw if anyone can tell me what erotic underground,ı cosmos,ı cosmic jokerı and sleeping monkı all credited instrumentsı actually sound like). Even though Kawabata doesnıt hold the grudge against ROCK that many of his contemporaries see fit to perpetuate, the discıs opener ³Psycho Buddha² could certainly be mistaken for an all-out attack in which the once-monolithic and grounded giant finds himself uprooted and flung to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. With a shimmering mess of nearly indistinguishable instruments and a bulldozer pulse in place of a countable rhythm, itıs a manifesto to be reckoned with even if the rest of the disc isnıt quite able to match its grandiose intensity. ³Occie Lady² comes close if you get the titleıs Hendrix pun, youıll have a perfect idea of what it sounds like but the melodramatic solo piano coda that comes from nowhere to stifle the flailing drums, fat-bottomed bass and menacing wah-wah guitar is of questionable relevance. The remainder of the disc consists of trippy vocal workouts accompanied by divergent bursts of guitar virtuosity or other variants of damaged hippie folk put through an experimental ringer, before coming to rest on the heavy drone and delayed icicle chords of ³What Do I Want to Know² which gives the best aural approximation of interplanetary travel heard in these parts since Sun Raıs classic 60s and 70s workouts. Music as life, life as music. Itıs nice to know that some folks are still making rock music beyond the sphere of crass commerciality, no matter how much space may lie between their tiny dots on the map."-Scott Hreha Stomp and Stammer Web Zine "Acid Mothers Temple And The Melting Paraiso UFO (or as Iıll notate for brevityıs sake, AMT) are widely regarded as the leaders of the new Japanese psychedelia. At the forefront is Makoto Kawabata, who also plays with Mainliner (heavy, heavy psych-noise -- Blue Cheer meets the Melvins), Musica Transonic (basically Mainliner except the drummerıs from The Ruins -- even more chaotic), Toho Sara (avant cosmic improv), Syogo-Nari (never heard them, but they're supposed to be psych-folk), and approximately 37 other groups (note: number may have increased since this issue has gone to press). Not to mention his solo output, which dwells on the drone. AMT are a conglomeration of all of the above, which makes them the perfect launching pad for any of the above diversions. And The New Geocentric World Of... drives this point home. The main downside of this band is their sloppiness -- you won't confuse them with the JBs. And the opening track ³Psycho Buddha² could scare off even the most fearless of listeners. It kicks off with quiet music-box minimalism as a female voice utters the musical question ³What...What...What.² You find out exactly ³what² at the 45-second mark, when the band explodes into a 21-minute whirling dervish of chaotic rhythmic noise. Kawabataıs no slouch in the guitar department, and you can hear influences from Hendrix at his wildest to krauts like Guru Guru all over ³Psycho Buddha.² The production's as ramshackle as the musicians, with everything pushed into the red. This is the most confrontational, and the least successful, music on the disc. But if you can withstand the onslaught, you'll be prepared for a bounty of musical riches. ³Space Age Ballad² is one of the most beautiful cosmic folk songs Iıve ever heard, with a heavily reverbed, distinctly Japanese space whisper that sounds less like a vocal and more like a transmission from another dimension sent centuries ago. ³Youıre Still Now Near Me Everytime² is a slowed-down, more controlled version of ³Psycho Buddha² with avant-garde soloing over an atonal Hendrixian vamp. ³Universe Of Romance² offers Occidental shamanisms that converge to the awesome Mainliner-esque meltdown of ³Occie Lady.² The modern compositional solo piano coda segues into ³Mellow Hollow Love,² another Eastern-tinged psychedelic folk song with electronics weaving throughout. Finally, we depart from this new geocentric world with a sublime drone piece and we're back on Earth, a little wiser for the wear. AMT have a staggeringly virile output and they've done finer work (La Novia being my personal fave), but this is the best representation of their multifaceted abilities that youıll hear. Check it out now as a reference point, so youıll know how to answer Kawabata when he calls you up wanting to start a new band."-Scott Watkins "Japan's AMT are not bearers of flowers and beads, they are the sounds of death reincarnate - the final moment when one passes onto another plane of existence as their brain becomes forever obliterated by lightning. Almost nothing is normal about this album: there are only punishing assaults of chaotic spiralling fuzz and ancient folk mantras creeping out of a sinister Buddha from hell soaked with acid in a dirty texture recalling the isolation imposed by Pink Floyd's opus Ummagumma. There are no Strawberry Alarm Clocks, Doors or incense and peppermints. With the AMT, you are merely confronted with your worst fears and your inner-self. You will be glad you went on their trip, because after experiencing them anything will be possible. Just make sure they don't try to straighten you out with thorazine."-Roman Sokal
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