SOUNDTRACK: ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O.-Pink Lady Lemonade ~ You’re From Inner Space (2011).
This album is something like the fortieth AMT album and somewhere in the middle of the band’s tenure with this lineup:
Tsuyama Atsushi: monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Higashi Hiroshi: synthesizer, dancin’ king
Shimura Koji: drums, latino cool
Kawabata Makoto: guitar, guitar synthesizer, speed guru
The album consists of one song, the title track, broken into 4 parts all based around a simple, but rather lovely guitar melody
“Part 1” is 32 minutes long. It begins with the opening guitar melody which plays along with some trippy sounds. Tsuyama is reciting the words (in Japanese? English? Gibberish?) and occasionally you hear the words “Pink lady Lemonade.” At around 12 minutes drums and bass are added. Once the bass starts meandering through some catchy riffs, Kawabata starts soloing. It’s pretty far down in the mix (the main melody continues throughout). Then around 22 minutes Tsuyama starts adding the monster bass–wild riffs that go up and down the fretboard. With about 5 minutes left Kawabata starts playing s louder solo–louder than the rest of the music–and you can really hear him wailing away. Part 1 fades out completely before jumping into Part 2.
“Part 2” is only 5 minutes, but it is utter chaos, with everyone making a big pile of noise–keyboard banging, sliding bass, thumping drums and wild, seemingly uncontrollable guitars. It ends five minutes later with some warbling keys
Then comes “Part 3,” which runs just over the minutes. It’s a faster chord version of the same guitar intro with slow bass notes and a big guitar solo. It changes shape and adds some discoey bass lines. About midway through the synths take over and while there is music in the background the song becomes mostly washes of sounds.
“Part 4” ends the disc at just over 18 minutes. It picks up with the original guitar melody once more. This time, it’s only a minute until the drums and bass kick in and the soling begins. At five and a half minutes the guitar solo gets really loud and takes over. The soloing is wild for over ten minutes and then around 13 minutes the song grows very quiet with only the lead guitar and the heavily echoed main riff playing.
There’s on online version here that has this entire record but adds six minutes at the end of the last part which is mostly the introductory melody and some washes of keys over the top. i rather like this extra 6 minutes and it feels like a really nice ending.
[READ: May 1, 2021] “My First Passport”
This essay was translated from the Turkish by Maureen Feely.
Pamuk talks about people travelling from Turkey when he was young. First it was his father, who left the country when Orhan was seven. No one heard a word from him for several weeks when he turned up in Paris. He was writing notebooks and regularly saw John-Paul Sartre. He had become one of the penniless and miserable Turkish intellectuals who had been walking the streets of Paris. Initially Orhan’s grandmother sent Orhan’s father money but eventually she stopped subsidizing her bohemian son in Paris.
When he ran out of money he got a job with I.B.M. and was transferred to Geneva. Soon after Orhan’s mother joined his father but left Orhan and his brother with the grandparents. They would follow when school was done.
Orhan sat for his first passport photo (included in the essay). Thirty years later he realized that they had put the wrong eye color down–“a passport is not a document that tells us who were are but a document that shows what other people think of us.” (more…)
I Just Read About That... 