Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO
The New Geocentric World of...
[Squealer; 2001]
Rating: 8.9
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, October 3rd, 2001