Alien Transmission

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.


Johnny Brenda’s, March 24, 2008

The SoundSugar Scoop from our man Geoff

The geometric grid of Center City Philadelphia yields uneasily to the patchwork of cobblestone alleys and narrow streets that mark passage to the city’s Northeast section. The angular avenues, brought into being by the organic movement of goods and people between the farms and estates of the interior and the bustling markets along the mighty Delaware River and later hemmed in and rolled back by the soaring buttresses of Interstate 95, serve as a reminder of a forgotten pastoral culture of cattle paths, river landings, and dockside merchants. Our car snaked up Delaware Avenue, in the shadow of the highway, past innumerable dead ends and industrial lots, toward Johnny Brenda’s, a modern marketplace where, soon, we would delight in the psychedelic wares of Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., exotic sound-merchants from the Far East.

As we nosed forward, we came upon a great break in the grey: a vehicle engulfed in flames, crackling under a black column of smoke, at once a sentinel that propelled us onward and an omen that portended danger and savagery. We hastily left that scene behind, found a parking spot on a side street (safe from fire, it would seem), and made our way to the side staircase of the bar.

Butterflies of excitement washed over me as I ascended the stairs, anxious for the sensory disorganization and overload that I have come to expect from an Acid Mothers Temple show. We steeled ourselves as we left the world outside, ascending the dim stairway into the aerie of the unknown, the playground of the muses.

Within the mortal plane, Acid Mothers Temple is nominally led by guitarist and “speed guru” Kawabata Makoto, a veteran of improvisational outfits such as Mainliner and Musica Transonic. In 1995, Makoto recorded a series of casual jams with an assortment of lesser known musicians and friends from the fringes of the underground scene of his adopted hometown of Nagoya. The results were edited and overdubbed to create a jittery fusion of hard rock and electronic sounds that Makoto dubbed “extreme trip music.” Soon, a collective coalesced around the leadership of Makoto to continue to create and record expansive music that suggested the influence of the progressive and psychedelic rock of the seventies and the avant-garde experiments of seminal 20th-century composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Despite the inherent difficulties in translating his collage concepts to the concert hall, Makoto formed a group to perform under the name Acid Mothers Temple; an overseas tour was planned for 1998. (Several iterations of the Acid Mothers Temple collective have taken to the stage in the decade since, using a variety of names. However fluid the lineup, the band remains dedicated to exploration and improvisation.)

I first saw Acid Mothers Temple on an overheated June night in 2004. My initial impression as I strolled into the basement of the Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, which had been transformed into an impromptu concert venue, was that I had accidentally walked in on a middle-school dance. It was quiet except for an undercurrent of mumbled conversations; groups of disinterested young people sequestered themselves along the candy-colored walls. Some confused-looking men with long hair were milling about the stage, adjusting the equipment. As I pondered whether this was the band or its road crew, the first notes started to bubble out of the comically massive amplifiers. Attention slowly turned to the band as bassist Tsuyama Atsushi laid down a mesmerizing foundation of repeating figures over the rumble of Koizumi Hajime’s drums. Higashi Hiroshi stood center stage, leaning over a synthesizer, purple lights framing his flowing gray hair. On his left stalked the mighty Makoto, adding to the ambience with patient arpeggios.

Suddenly, without warning, peals of electric noise blasted forth from the speakers, tearing the fabric of the quiet night neatly in two. The band showed great discipline by keeping the groove steady as Makoto stepped forward and released chromatic sheets of sound. As he drew out more profound tones from deep within the instrument, the speed guru held his guitar vertically, its head pointed to the heavens. The posture was reverent, not prurient; the resultant energy was spiritual, not sexual or onanistic. As the band moved through its unforgettable set, the crowd and the band became one, merging in a frenzied ritual akin to worship. Time became distorted: How long had they been playing? An hour? Two hours? Have they always been playing?

When the band finally left the stage for the night, the hollow-eyed crowd staggered out of the sweltering venue. Haggard faces wore the blank expressions of shellshock. People began to remove whatever items of clothing that they dared and wring them dry. I’m not sure if the pervasive silence that I made note of on the way out was the natural reaction to such an onslaught or if it reflected an inability to comprehend or elucidate what we had just witnessed; maybe it was the natural result of the hearing damage that we all must have endured.

Back to the present: I entered the bar area and surveyed the scene. On the ground to my left, sitting against the wall behind the merchandise table, was Makoto. As I caught his eye, I gave him a nod and a smile. In the split second before he returned the gesture, I thought, Did I give him too much nod? Was it more of a long nod or a bow? Oh Christ, does he think I bowed to him because he’s Japanese, or maybe because I have some celebrity thing going on? I’m an ignoramus.

I bought a drink at the bar and then staked out a plum spot in front of the stage before the show started. The performance area at Johnny Brenda’s, in the room beyond the bar, is intimate, almost claustrophobic. The only other show I had seen there was an acoustic evening with Bert Jansch, so I was unsure how the heavy rain of Acid Mothers Temple would go over in the limited confines. As it turned out, the band adjusted their leaden attack to accommodate. I don’t mean to suggest that they weren’t loud, or had somehow “gone soft”; on the contrary, the volume level was high enough that I was wise to keep my distance from the main speakers, just not loud enough to peel back the varnish off the walls. This restraint on the part of the soundman rewarded us with a mix of instruments that stayed clear and sharp all night long. (A recording of the show that I heard later confirmed my observation.)

The band took the stage to a smattering of cheers. The first phantom notes from the theremin drifted over the crowd, joined by a droning guitar. A feedback assault poured out of the speakers, blitzing the crowd. A ferocious guitar riff weaved its way to a dramatic conclusion, ending with a crunchy low E. Bassist Atsushi and Shimura Koji, the drummer, locked into a sludgy, loping groove that threatened to swallow up the guitar lines like mud over spinning tires. Deep-bass guttural chanting soon joined the mix. The effect of the Dorian-mode melodic lines, the quicksand-stop rhythm, the deep-throat singing, and the bodies swaying in synchrony was a sharpening of the senses coupled with a feeling of great calm. It brought to mind the meditative alpha-state or the sharp focus attained through intense study, fasting, or other ritualistic behaviors. When I looked again at the band, they had taken on an otherworldly glow. They looked less like men than animated devil-gods receiving and broadcasting distant signals consisting of Gregorian chants, space noise, and seismic waves from deep within the mantle of the Earth. For a moment, I felt as if I were watching Cartoon Network’s “Metalocalypse,” played at half speed, after drinking my weight in cough syrup.

The next song opened with wah-wah tones playing call-and-response with a lone voice, until the sounds began to intermingle, weaving their way to the slab-guitar riff of “Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky.” The music lurched forward deliberately, punctuated by vocalizations that modulated from low to high register—Frankie Valli, live from the Mongolian steppes. The music dissolved to feedback, wailing electronic noises, and, eventually, to bass alone. Suddenly, the band shot back. Koji rode the hi-hats to construct a strident double-time rhythm, as Makoto fought his space wars. Atsushi’s kinetic bass lines spun in an orderly orbit like electrons. Hiroshi’s synth sounds hovered well above it all, mutating, unstable. Brief drill-sergeant outbursts caused momentary distress, like biting into aluminum foil, before disappearing beneath the music as immediately as they emerged. A whistling jam preceded the telltale bowed guitar sounds of the Occitan traditional song, “La Nòvia.” Hiroshi and Makoto established a sympathetic interplay before a renewed guitar attack introduced another song from the ancient Mediterranean region of Occitania, “La Le Lo.” The evocative tune reminds me of a sea shanty; Acid Mothers Temple is quite interested in traditional folk music, and their acumen for interpretation shines in this arrangement.

Following a brief improvisational interlude led by Atsushi, the air cleared, and the pleasant, lilting arpeggios of “Pink Lady Lemonade” were greeted with cheers of recognition from the crowd. The drums propelled the music forward, and the band created a delicate latticework over the next 10 minutes, repeating a simple chord progression of C major to D major. Makoto’s arpeggios created an aggressive tension, moving from the major third to the unsettling tritone over the C, but resolving to the sweet perfect-fourth suspension from a major third over the D. Makoto held the framework together in unison with Koji as the drummer lengthened the measures, modulating from the dominant 4/4 time signature to 5/4, then to 6/4. Atsushi alternated between playing it straight and firing off blistering bass runs. Finally, Makoto broke from the hypnotic groove, setting squealing guitar rounds over the foundation. Hiroshi added ambient electronic sound and then supportive guitar, playing a host of utility roles, as the music built toward an anti-crescendo of bowed guitar and drums. Atsushi kicked in with a bass line that suggested Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play,” and the band was off again. This time, the guitar played a series of six notes in three I–V movements, each couplet beginning on the fourth of the root note of the preceding couplet, heralding the show-stopping closer, “Speed Guru.”

After several more minutes of trancelike build-up, a final assault was unleashed. Makoto held the neck of his guitar aloft, in his worship pose, fusing with the instrument to emote ever more sublime frequencies. Hiroshi sent arcs of electronic sound in wild vectors. The music became pure entropy, an incomprehensible disorder. As the players sounded the final notes, Makoto hung his guitar, which had threatened all night to fly away under its own impossible power, on a hook that protruded from the face of the balcony. The instrument was left to hover above the stage as the band exited. The crowd, however exhausted, still exhorted the band with several minutes of claps and cheers for one more putsch, but there was to be no encore. Just as well: The state of transcendent passion, love, and pure joy that had been reached by the band and the audience alike could not have been improved upon. We walked out feeling not exhausted, but exalted. We floated above the sidewalk as we made our way to the car. Touching ground again, cool breeze brushing my cheek, I realized anew how good it felt to be alive. Alive and free.