June 02, 2004
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. | Live at the Abbey Pub Chicago |Alien8 | Japan
You never hear Acid Mothers Temple mentioned in the same breath as Stateside bands like Phish and String Cheese Incident. But they should be. Because AMT are a hippie jam band. They're the first to admit it. In fact, everything about them screams it. Their show last Friday at Chicago's Abbey had all the fixins: endless guitar wanking, cultish fans, dutiful concert tapers and--for the non-fanatic--that nagging question that manages to overpower the high stage volume: "Am I missing something?"
Despite the prog and metal embellishments, the major musical differences between them and their American peers amount to their stringent minimalism and Dada/noise breakdowns.
I do mean minimalism. The longest and most complex song of the night had two chords. They played it for maybe twenty-five minutes, then played a one-chord jam for fifteen, then suddenly reprised the two-chord number for another twenty-five or thirty. By the show's end, I pondered my $14 ticket and guessed I had spent nearly three dollars a chord. Philip Glass is a chordal spendthrift by comparison.
The absurdist elements held a lot more interest for me. In this regard bassist Tsuyama Atsushi carried the show. He joked in obscure, broken English, sang fragments of random songs, argued with himself in the tones of an Indonesian shadow puppetmaster and, as an encore, strummed his gig bag and sang yet another random song.
Guitarists Higashi Hiroshi and Kawabata Makoto played it relatively straight by comparison. Hiroshi is an amazing stage presence. With his mystical manner, thin face, goatee and long, graying hair, he looked like a Kurosawan Christ who decided to stick around after the resurrection just to wave hair, strum guitar and make theramin sounds on a Roland something-or-other. Lead guitarist Makoto has a fondness for pointing his guitar neck up to the heavens, as if to touch the fingertip of God. When these guys take the piss, they do it so earnestly that you can't be sure if the piss has really left the building.
In a way, AMT's visual and spiritual chops are more important than the musical. Japanese groups like OOIOO outdo them in terms of noisy, organic experimentalism. Americans like the recently departed Phish are better at bouncing patchouli mammas around. But Acid Mothers Temple exude a kind of timeless rock magnetism that no amount of woodshedding in the practice space can buy--and they have an ever growing cult following to prove it. Jerry would be proud.
Posted by Mack Hagood at June 2, 2004 08:24 PM