[ATTENDED: May 18, 2023] Acid Mothers Temple
I have seen Acid Mothers Temple twice and both times were mind blowing.
The pandemic kept them from coming here for about three years so I was pretty excited to get to see them again.
They came out and Jyonson Tsu found out that his guitar was broken (it was supposed to have been repaired), so he had to borrow a guitar from ST 37. Then they had trouble at the soundcheck. Jyonson couldn’t hear anything in his monitor and Higashi Hiroshi’s synthesizer was quiet.
Kawabata Makoto started jamming out a solo and the band kicked into high gear while poor Higashi sat there making no sounds at all. Finally, Kawabata grabbed the mic and yelled a few things and soon enough, there was synth and we all cheered and they started with “Blue Velvet Blues.”
I will admit that I don’t know many of the song names and most of their songs sound the same to me–a blur of (wild and frenetic) guitar soloing and then a slow middle section (or vice versa). Although these songs all have “parts” and “Blue Velvet” has a slow moody middle section which slows down and in which Jyonson sings a mournful melody.
They jumped into “Dark Star Blues” in which Jyonson plays a gourd-shaped mandolin (A very cool sound) and sings before the band kicks in.
Back on the drums, Satoshima Nani is so much fun to watch. When the songs really pick up steam, he is a blur of limbs–smacking the crap out of everything in sight. But he can also slow things down and keep that really slow pace (like in “Blue Velvet Blues”). He must be a sweaty mess by the end of the shows.
The last two times I saw them, on bass was Wolf. Wolf left to do his own thing (I wonder how that’s going) and for this show he was replaced by Ron Anderson (the first non-Japanese player I’ve seen play with them). I didn’t know who he was but Wikipedia tells me that he is known for collaborations with many famous musicians, and has a large catalog of releases and compositions.
He was great too. Playing some really cool jazzy basslines that seemed to accentuate the wildness that Kawabata was laying down. He was especially notable on their cover of Gong’s “Flying Teapot” which has a very cool bass line.
They played roughly seven songs, but who can say where the songs began and ended. “Blue Velvet” ran over 15 minutes. Their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” was a uge surprise to me. The riff is so recognizable. Their version is pretty close to the original with the main riff and a massive freak out in the middle.
This was the first show I’ve seen by them where they didn’t play any of “Pink Lady Lemonade.” And that’s fine, although I’m somewhat surprised that they’ve ended with “Cometary Orbital Drive” each time. It’s a great set ender. A slow riff that builds and build and builds growing faster and faster and which can be stretched out as long as Kawabata wants.
As the song came to its noisy ending, he held his guitar out into the audience and I got to brush the strings, which was pretty cool as I usually don’t get perks like that.
And then, like all shows, he held his guitar aloft and gentle slammed it on top of his amps to signify the end.
Every show is different. But every show is also the same. And you feel transported every time.
Here’s a few words (Google translated) from Makoto about the show (his blog is great).
A 90-minute set will be shown tonight. On the North American tour, we usually start the performance only with the line check just before the performance, unless we do a sound check. In other words, when the start time was pushed, I started playing without hesitation, but the sound engineer interrupted the performance because he did not start monitoring Azuma’s synthesizer. Then, when Azuma-kun’s monitor finally functioned, the audience applauded loudly, and the performance resumed. However, if I suddenly break the tremolo arm, I have no choice but to play the whole song at speed tonight, and even if I’m on the verge of being shipwrecked in a black hole instead of drifting in space, a furious wave of dismantling and rebuilding goes wild. After that, after a new ritual called Guitar Crowd Surfing, the curtain finally reached the finale.
Here’s a video from RhymanTube of the opening jam/soundcheck problem
| 2023 Johnny Brenda’s | 2019 The Saint | 2018 Underground Arts |
|---|---|---|
| Jam (while soundcheck was finishing up) | La Novia | Dark Star Blues ‰ |
| Blue Velvet Blues ⊗ | Sycamore Trees | Blue Velvet Blues ⊗ |
| Dark Star Blues ‰ | From Planet Orb With Love > | Disco Pink Lady Lemonade > |
| Interstellar Overdrop (Pink Floyd cover) > | Good-Bye Mrs. Uranus | La Le Lo > |
| Flying Teapot (Gong cover) | Hello Good Child > | In C |
| From Planet Orb With Love § > | Disco Pink Lady Lemonade > | Untitled > |
| Good-Bye Mrs. Uranus § | In E > | Nanique Another Dimension > |
| Cometary Orbital Drive ⇔ | Pink Lady Lemonade coda | Pink Lady Lemonade coda > |
| Cometary Orbital Drive | Cometary Orbital Drive |
It’s unclear to me what records these songs first appeared on (as they have 1,000 records out), although Setlist does a pretty good job, I think.
‰ Does the Cosmic Shepherd Dream of Electric Tapirs? (2004)
≅ Electric Dream Ecstasy (2018)
⊗ Pataphisical Freak Out MU!! (1999)
§ Sacred and Inviolable Phase Shift (2018)
⇔ Cometary Orbital Drive (2008)
I had just checked to see the status of this show and the following day it was announced that their tour was cancelled. Not surprising of course, but still sad.
I Just Read About That... 