Acid Mothers Temple
& The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
Absolutely Freakout (Zap Your Mind!!)
Static Caravan Recordings/Resonant

With a name like that you have a lot to live up to, but these guys and girls really do deliver the "out" stuff. More hair and energy than most anything you ever going to come across. Imagine a cross between early drudgy Pink Floyd, Blue Cheer at their most violent, modern improvnoise, occident folkmusic and Japanese religious chants and you get a curious blend that reminds you of everything you ever wanted hippiemusic to sound like. But of course it never did, nothing ever sounded like this. Especially live are the Acid Mothers a joy to behold. A word of advice - go to extreme lengths to see this band live. You'll never regret it, never forget it and maybe never go to a concert again.

This last year have been a especially busy year for the Mothers, the beautiful La Novia LP (a French folksong stretched out over both sides) and the following tour last winter (which brought them to Oslo for the first time), this double LP and as you read this the next LP - New Geocentric World are probably released. Not to mention a new tour of Europe this fall and touring and recording with their countless other projects, solo or with bands like Mainliner, Floating Flower, Toho Sara, Mady Gula Blue Heaven, High Rise and Ohkami No Jikan. Troublesome enough they are all worth checking out.

As an introduction to Acid Mothers Temple this double LP serves the task well, here you have several (but not all) sides of the band collected on one record. It starts fittingly enough with Supernal Infinite Space, a lengthy song worthy of any rare krautrockmonster, loops and electronics propels the band into outer space... and before long you are drifting out there with them. Suddenly they slow down to a Hawaiian psychedelic jam, complete with a lovely saxophone (which I normally are really sceptical about). Side two shows more of the bands heavy side, guitars as thick as molten lava flows out of the speakers, thunderous drums beats merciless grooves that are all over the place and every kind of effects are applied. The songs interlocks and it's very difficult to say where one song ends and where the next one starts. Side three opens with another visit to krautland, the enigmatically titled The Incipient Light on the Echoes makes me think of a modern version of Ash Ra Temple. Next comes the first example of their folksy side before the heavy stuff returns. The last side alternates between the slow mellow songs and the more experimental space explorations. Maybe this is the place to start if you are not familiar with the bands long and quite demanding songs.

These modern hippies revitalises the whole notion of acid music, and ears with an affinity for earlier days efforts can do a lot worse than give the Acid Mothers a chance.

Copyright © 2001 Killer