Important
Well, here I am strapped into my capsule in preparation for another blast off to the planet of the Acid Mothers Temple and this album doesn’t disappoint. A large crash and we are straight into “Space Speed Suicide.” Immediately Kawabata Makoto’s Hendrix style guitar solos assault our ears over a massive Pink Fairies-like riff underneath and some wildly clattering drums. This is the violent explosion of Saturn five rockets at the beginning of the journey into space with a big head-banging tune to boot. This is the moment you are down the front at one of their shows doing ape-shit hippy dancing while lights and smoke flash around you. It’s take off time!
“Skilful Grinning Skull” starts off with
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After a slight hitch of the ‘computer says no’ variety, I finally stumble into the fog-filled haze of Corsica Studios as the band are strapping on their guitars ready to play. Tonight we are going to be treated to a five-piece Acid Mothers Temple – also tonight they will play one of the tightest and best sets I’ve seen them do, and that’s certainly saying something.
With its pun title based on the Syd Barrett Pink Floyd album, the new Acid Mothers album seems to be one of their most scorching psychedelic yet, but in a very traditional way. The opening track “Chinese Flying Saucer” has Led Zepplin’s “A Whole Lotta Love” stamped all over it, from the opening riff to the faux Robert Plant vocals to the bizarre middle instrumental lead guitar work out. In a strange way it reminded me of a lot of bands who used to play at the Alice in Wonderland club in the Eighties and certainly would
I’ve probably seen Acid Mothers Temple play at Corsica Studios more times than any other venue in London and they always seem at home and relaxed on stage here. This I’ve sometimes felt is quite odd, as Corsica feels like one of those venues that is struggling to find its own identity. It caters for the Hip crowd but also puts on a blistering psychedelic commotion like the Acid Mothers. As always at Corsica when AMT are on the audience tonight is split right down the middle with its tie-dyed space travellers in blessed-out freak mode rubbing shoulders with the stroking beard hipster crowd. Tonight though, we were all about to witness two hours of space rock mayhem that makes Kawabata Makoto and the band so special.
Collecting Acid Mothers Temple releases can leave you very light in the wallet area (I know this from experience) due to the volume of their output . So there is quite a minefield of material out there to negotiate, some amazing, some a little like the band treading water. As I know AMT well it was going to be interesting to hear what Stearica, a band I didn’t know, would add to the mighty Japanese behemoths sound.
In Search of Hawkwind is a tribute album, whereby nine venerable old battle hymns originally cranked out by the veteran psychedelic cosmonauts are re-interpreted by younger, hipper bands, mostly from the US (at least I think so- I’m not actually hip enough to have heard of all of them). There have been other Hawkwind tributes, but they’ve tended to be low-budget releases featuring deservedly obscure free festival-type acts, though the likes of Acid Mothers Temple (of whom more below) and Wire’s Colin Newman have popped up on them too. This looks to be a bigger-league affair, nicely packaged and featuring a couple of biggish names in Mudhoney and the aforementioned Acid Mothers, alongside established neo-psych stalwarts Bardo Pond and a clutch of younger
With a band as prolific and expansive as the Acid Mothers Temple, it’s somewhat difficult to select a “typical” release to settle on, and perhaps (perhaps not) Does The Cosmic Shepherd Dream Of Electric Tapirs? is as good as any as a starting point for the uninitiated. The album opens with a kosmische wind and wibbling analogue synths, mysterious voices from the aether and a sense of psychedelic foreboding, so the ingredients for a lengthy trip are there from the off. In fact, by the time “Daddy’s Bare Meat” kicks in to full Space Rock
Hirsute fans aside, the evening opens with the shorn Norwegian Kosmische favourites Salvatore, whose progression beyond Post-Rock finds them riding on solid grooves accompanied by rippling melodies. Their instrumental glide is usually right at home, but tonight their performance lacks a continuous sparkle, breezing through on a pleasant churn of electronics and assorted
Kosmische @ The Garage, London 31 May 2001
Beware all snow leopards; indeed all mammals were at risk of having their asses rocked Thursday at the Kosmische Club‘s presentation of Acid Mothers Temple. Once Southall Riot was done with their opening imitation of all that was Krautrock in a Nineties sort of style, all three chord-led and droney – and most of which I missed – Acid Mothers Temple strolled on, lit up and rawked out. An enthusiastic audience had to have been relieved by the breathing space afforded by the last minute manoeuvre to downstairs at The Garage, knowing that Upstairs would never have accommodated the sweating, grooving, smoking crowd, much less the band’s hair. You would never want to invite this group over for showers, unless