PATAPHISICAL FREAK OUT MU!!

Freak the killa album out!

From Japan noisy space rock frontiers have come I want to say. Indeed everybody may define ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE (AMT) as Makoto Kawabata's speed guru project and it may be natural for us, but I consider this project can't work without the basis by Atsushi Tsuyama's monster bass and Hajime Koizumi's exploded and extra hard drums.

Latter of the first track Acid Takion is exactly as a one-man show of Makoto with his speedy and crazy electric violence. However, rigid rhythm battle of bass and drums must keep the guitar sound more spacey and sharp-edged.

Another interesting stuff on the album is the next track White Summer Of Love/Third Eye Of The Whole World with soft and gentle air and space. This moment should let us relaxed on the space trip.

Golden Bat Blues Dead has so bluesy style that I suggest we can be amazed at their talent. After that, suddenly Oriental Mr. Hardy Guidey Man could bring us to Astrological Overdrive, an endless highway (Eien Ni Tsuzuku Highway). :-)

Right About Rainbow I/Your My Only Super Sunshine/Right About Rainbow II is a fierce tiger called AMT waking up and chasing games. This sound is the most rampant of all songs in the work. Funky, cranky, and sticky electronic wind blows.

The last longest track Blue Velvet Blues is a masterpiece. Bluesy and depressive guitar makes a rhythm. Drumming is indeed slow and laid back but strict and serious. Then a noisy bomber's come! No, not only noisy but drowsy. Makoto seems to be terribly pleased to twist his guitar. Even keen explosion may have some meanings. Namely, this sound might shoot us away like fireworks. At the middle part, silky feminine chorus let us meditate deeply...as in a religious service. We must be absorbed in a religion by Acid Mothers TEMPLE. The latter part is for us not noisy any longer. Our bodies and minds are all　broken and hoisted up over the TEMPLE and scattered in the world. At last all are over as nothing is there.

I suppose Makoto was born in Nara, Japan, where are lots of temples and idols of Buddha. He should have religious background. He could make a mixture with psychedelia and religion...

What a clever guru he is!

Stoner psych rock not for the squeamish...

The Acid Mothers Temple unit is a strange one, and I had no idea what to expect though their album covers signify a return to the vintage psychedelic acid fuelled flower power of the late 60s. I don't mind a brain blast occasionally of psychedelia such as Gong, or space rock such as Hawkwind, but those bands are nowhere near as tripped out as Acid Mother's Temple, not even close. It is like vintage Gong without the lyrics, mixed with Hawkwind's jamming sessions from their earlier years such as "Space Ritual", and one may also detect hints of krautrock such as Can or Grobschnitt's "Solar Music". "Pataphysical Freak Out MU!!" is extreme acid rock taken to the Nth degree. The band are concentric on capturing spaced out LSD soaked atmospherics using any musical instrument at their disposal. The guitars are a prominent focus using phased wah wah effects and sustained string bends.

The opening track 'Cosmic Audrey/Acid Takion' sounds like Jimi Hendrix had forgotten the words; it is simply mind expanding spacey guitar with a ton of feedback and a driving fast tempo beat. It is a well played guitar solo, but it has no riff or tune and is completely improvised over a sonic musical scape. It is certainly one of the better tracks on the album simply for its brute force and no holds barred killer guitar that shreds into the brain; designed to blow the brain apart in would say. Makoto Kawabata is the guitar speed master who is joined by layers of Atsushi Tsuyama bass explosions and Hajime Koizumi of percussion blasts.

Next on the menu, is a dose of tranquillity on 'White Summer Of Love/Third Eye Of The Whole World', with some acoustics and ambience, once again without a melody, or tune, but simply a hypnotic sound to kick back to, presumably after a hit of the acid; it is a come down song. The space whispers are reminiscent of Gong but not as sensuous, though the vocals on 'Astrological Overdrive' are a little more relaxing with all the spacey textures vibrating around them.

The music though on the album builds with hypnotic repetitions and includes extremely distorted guitars such as on the lengthy 'Blue Velvet Blues' that is virtually an improvised guitar on high phased fuzzy reverb. Makoto again takes center stage but it may grate on the nerves after about 6 minutes, though it is only about half way through. The sound is ultra-psyched out and is obviously LSD induced. It would not be surprising to learn that the whole album was created under the influence, such is the vibe of the music.

This is quite a chilling album that left me cold from wanting to explore further into this band. It is certainly a curio and the band have produced a plethora of other albums equally as trippy in the content one would expect. They have an underground cult following for good reason and will only appeal to a certain section of listeners; a very elite section at that who are into stoner rock with an extreme acid fuelled edge. It is what it is, and I would say if you wanted to listen to some of the trippiest music on the planet perhaps you could go no further than Acid Mother's Temple and the Melting Paraisio UFO, and this is one of their highest rated albums, therefore a good place to start. This stoner rock is not for the squeamish, that is for certain.

Japan perhaps more than any other nation in the world has truly excelled in delivering some of the most extreme musical expressions conceivable in virtually every possible way whether it be the strange experimental noise rock of The Gerogeigegege, the electronic experimental freakery of Merzbow, the post-punk antics of Melt Banana or the bizarre multi-genre potpourri of the avant-metal band Sigh. While standing out as one of Asia's most unique and dynamic regions for experimental and avant-garde music, the nation has also excelled at adopting Western styles and likewise taking things to even more extreme levels than any of the pioneers could've imagined. The wild zeuhl run amok of bands like Ruins and Koenji Hyakkei or the brutal avant-prog excesses of Bondage Fruit and P.O.N. have shocked and thrilled extremophiles for decades and that small sampling is really just a mere drop in the bucket of the vast pool of talent that this island nation has cranked out.

Yet another standout of demented debauchery has to be the lysergic lumpenproletariat of the Japanese underground, the Nagoya born ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. which is mercifully often shortened to merely ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE or for the even less ambitious, simply AMT. Led by the restless visions of freak guitarist Makoto Kawabat also known as Speed Guru, this collective of numerous performers has been cranking out the farthest out trips in musical form since 1995 with well over 70 studio albums under its belt and an endless list of crossover acts ranging from bands such as Acid Mothers Temple & Space Paranoid to the Daevid Allen collaborations including Acid Mothers Gong. The collective has unleashed some of the least recognizable musical / noise hybrids that took its inspiration from progressive rock and Krautrock as well as the experimental modern classical composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti.

With more releases than any sane individual could possibly soak in, i have been loath to explore the massive canon of these sonic sorcerers bent on taking the craziest 70s Krautrock freakery and multiplying the detachment in just about every possible way. This was the album that introduced me to the mighty ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE and pretty much the only one i've yet encountered as their albums tend to be sprawling, completely improvisational and well over an hour's playing time and such is the case with this second release PATAPHYSICAL FREAK OUT MU!! which reared its ugly head in the psychedelic underground in 1999. With such blatant truth in advertising you pretty much know what to expect with this one. While facets of traditional musical styles add a touch of Earthly connection to the unhinged savagery that awaits you with this one, the album features a mere five tracks that will steal just over 68 minutes of your precious attention span and still leave you wondering what in the world you just encountered!

For the majority of the tracks minus the near 26-minute closer "Blue Velvet Blues," the tracks are what you could refer to as psychedelic medleys where one completely whacked out trip cedes to another. The perfect example is the opening "Cosmic Audrey / Acid Takion" which begins with spoken French dialogue from Audrey Ginestet reminding of the space whisperer moments of Gilli Smyth of classic Gong. Once the dialogue drifts off into the past the psychedelic noise rock rears its ugly head with an incessant sprawling display of frenetic drumming outdone only by the unorthodox guitar brutality of Kawabata. With enough energetic drive to melt down a nuclear reactor, Kawabata showcases some of the freakiest guitar antics that make most noise rock bands look like chump change. While the compelling opener gets you all hot and bothered and ready for more disorienting head trips, the pointless "White Summer of Love / Third Eye of the Whole World" simply nurtures an folky cyclical loop accompanied by a bunch of effects and what sounds like Yoko Ono during mating season.

The four parter "Golden Bat Blues Dead / Mr. Hardy Guidey Man / Magic Aûm LSD / Astrological Overdrive" sounds like it's trying to emulate a Jimi Hendrix style only what he would have delivered during his final moments before he overdosed. The tracks morphs into a hurdy-gurdy meditation and then becomes a vocal pop track gone wrong with dissonant jangly guitar chords and sounding like the chanting of the Jim Jones "Jonestown" koolaid cult just before they dropped over dead. "Right About Rainbow I / Your My Only Super Sunshine / Right About Rainbow II" delivers more of the spaced out psychedelic folk with lots of oscillating swirlies and then some guitar reverb from hell that soon dominates the soundscape. Repetitive folk strumming for minutes with pure unadulterated chaos looming above is the modus operendi with this one and then it just gets louder and more well? PATAPHYSICAL which by the way refers to the French absurdist concept of a philosophy or science dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics, intended as a parody of the methods and theories of modern science and often expressed in nonsensical language. Hey! I think we found the perfect soundtrack for this very concept!

The closing "Blue Velvet Blues" is a typical ACID MOTHERS 20-minute sprawler that journeys into the world of long drawn out cyclical riffing that glacially ratchets up the tension and then drifts between caustic guitar fuzz feedback laden passages and softer Spaghetti Western / surf rock toned guitar styles with the local space whisperer Cotton Casino delivering nonsensical utterances from the unknown. Did i say the track goes on and on and on? Well it does. It seems like it's on perpetual loop mode. Well one thing is for sure and that is that this is definitely some of the most extreme expressions of psychedelic rock ever created. ACID MOTHERS goes for the lysergia jugular in just about every way possible but for all its attempts to be the weirdest, loudest, most detached from reality and the closest musical interpretation of a very bad LSD trip, the music is mostly monotonous and rather dull. PATAPHYSICAL FREAK OUT MU!! is one of those experiences that really takes you somewhere new upon first exposure but the problem is that it's not somewhere where you really want to return as is the case with the bulk of ATM's vast canon of quantity over quality. It's a fun spin every now and again because of the fact there's nothing really to grasp onto and once you've completely forgotten about it in a few years it's a welcome experience to explore once again. A decent heavy dosage of LSD soaked psych noise rock. Not sure what to call this but ultimately it's only something you can occasionally revisit lest you loose your total connection to reality.