Acid Mothers Temple and The Cosmic Inferno – Doobie Wonderland

Parallax Sounds

I’ve seen Acid Mothers Temple numerous times and checked most of their incarnations: those skull-scribbled morays and splintered overlays leaving you blissfully skewed on their satisfaction guarantee; and I’m glad to say this latest offering continues the fun in a erotika of vintage sc-fi and vooming accents, twisting your melon in blurring hooks of vox.

The title track is a ’60s Barbarella flounce, a sleazily slick affair built around an acoustic twang-a-rang and valve-phonics. Pika from the insanely bright but sadly defunct Afrirampo recruited to good effect, balancing that all-male orientation with her free-floating vocal gymnastics and drum action. Boredoms‘ Mitsuru syllable grazing Pika’s breathy exuberance with the repeated lines “Do U remember… Doodie Wonderland” as Wah Czar Kawabata Makoto throws out his Eric Clapton-frazzled frets… Like Keiji Haino, Mr Makoto knows a thing or two about thrusting your conciseness into the great beyond and before long he’s ramping up the energy into a tungsten burn of distorting paisley patterns that pan your hemispheres like dirty daygloo tadpoles. It’s as if all that rhythmic candy and valve monkey wo-wo-woozery was purposely being condensed, forcing the whole album into this single track. A rich brew fizzing with hypo-phonic vox  and melding octaves as the damage flies off on funkier tangents, collapsing somewhere near the 21 minute mark, making for one hell of an incredible opener

“Planet Golden Love” continues the celestial fun with a motorik jousting of drums and keys, a loopological insistence drilling your head letting the easi-goo of vocals flow unimpeded. That magically mutated Beatles-esque vibe given a mescaline injection, the effect elevators cloud surfing, the edges of which seemingly picked apart by hungry starlings. “Dance with Space Gypsy Queen” in contrast slows things down in an anti-grav of oscillatory satellites and shimmery riffage.  Mitsuru’s vocals echo drifting in and out of focus of the synthy bubble trails as if the Emmanuelle soundtrack were reflected into a bendy mirror.

The heat is turned up again for “M.J.Love 666”, which hogs the Amon Düül 2 limelight, given over to a burning overdrive of Kawabata prowess, Pika and Tabata engaged in a duet of psychedelic flora. “I’m satan 6-6-6,” goes Tabata, Pika replying like a love-sick Gilli Smyth calling across the vapour with gasping expectation, “yes, yes, yes” as the whole thing suggestively splashes through the jettison of some silvery sun. “Shinning O and Jupiter” is a lovely journey’s end, weaves a farewell on whirling crystals and alphabet soups, and shares a similiar vibe to the Gypsy Queen track, as a shiver of neurological chordage throws you a rope that rapidly disappears down that ectoplasmic tunnel.

This is enormous fun, full of face-melting riffery and enough interstellar cliché to propel you beyond the milky way – another fine release from the ever mutating Acid Mothers collective.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-