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Andrew's Collection

Acid Mothers Temple   04/07/2009

Biltmore, Vancouver, BC
Source Soundboard --> Sony MZ-R700 MD Recorder --> analog transfer to .wav --> + 5 dB gain and tracking in WaveLab --> FLAC Frontend level 8
Media Flac CDR   1 disc
Tech Notes "Taper: globual


SOUND QUALITY & OTHER RELEVANT COMMENTS:
I won't rate the sound quality of this fiasco of a recording. "A bitter tragic joke" are the first words you'll hear courtesy of the PA system playing some candy pop music during the intermission before Acid Mothers Temple took to stage. Let these be the secret words of this archival material. You'll hear the joke all over in the form of awful dropouts, at times lasting over a second, and all class of digital hiccup, signs of my obsolete 10-year old machine about to give up for good (as ZP suggested, the laser just couldn't take the intensity of this music!), which eventually happened at the 57-minute mark, part way through Pink Lady Lemonade. So there it all stops dead, as the band is noodling a little and getting ready to launch into Cosmic Soul Death Disco and Cometary Orbital Drive/Speed Guru, frantic, psychedelic, and beautiful peak, the way you've heard them on other circulated recordings from the Lord of the Underground/Are We Experimental tour. I figure we're missing about 25-30 minutes of the show, which elsewhere, for example in the opening of the PLL suite, reaches some of the quietest and most lyrical moments of the tour. I won't judge the work of the soundman at the Biltmore Lounge. I can tell you he was the most accommodating man at the soundboard I ever collaborated with. In retrospect, I wish I had brought my laptop for a direct to .wav feed, for there was enough room to set myself up very comfortably at his boot. Bass and drums are quite prominent in the mix, muting somewhat Kawabata's guitar. Kawabata takes time to solo in PLL, letting us hear for a long time Tsuyama's intricate bass lining, sounding almost like digital popcorn ready to burst open, and any drummers will appreciate the chance to hear Shimura's very physical but precise and clear drumming. Tsuyama was the cosmic Zen master of this extravaganza, so funny in his "are we experimental" chatter that he made even Kawabata chime in. The Vancouver audience was positively mesmerized. In contrast to the last year's show at Pat's Pub, this time all I was able to see was a sea of heads studiously bobbing and eyes and mouths wide open in amazement. Just listen to the opening section of PLL. Obviously you can't hear much audience on a soundboard recording, but trust me the room was just as quiet as on this "tape", attentive to every little note of Tsuyama's acoustic guitar.



THE BAND:
Tsuyama Atsushi: monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Higashi Hiroshi: synth, guitar, voice, dancin'king
Shimura Koji: drums, latino cool
Kawabata Makoto: guitar, voice, speed guru


TRACK LIST:

01. Are We Experimental Tragic Joke Preamble
02. Experimental Intro Jam
03. Vancouver Only Experimental Japanese Noise
04. The Tails Of Solar Sail
05. Dark Stars In The Dazzling Sky
06. Underground Freak Out Rock'N'Roll Tuning
07. Holy Rock'N'Roll Bible
08. Are We Experimental
09. Pink Lady Lemonade [incomplete]

MISSING:
10. Cosmic Soul Death Disco
11. Cometary Orbital Drive/Speed Guru

total time: 57:28


BAND PAGE:
http://www.acidmothers.com


SHOW NOTES (this is my own short review of the concert for a local indie music magazine, The Skinny):

Acid Mothers Temple are timeless. On April 7th, 2009, at the Biltmore, round about midnight when their Vancouver show started, they looked just as they did in their photos taken a decade ago, where you can see a band of self-proclaimed social misfits and underground freaks striking poses that conjure up images of dandies, hippies, Buddhist monks, and shamans. “Troubadours from another heavenly world” indeed. This band need not change, though this is not a refusal or limitation. It has to do with maximizing the intensity of the moment, creating a pulsating reality of now, free of any expectations and filled with music unfolding spontaneously in response to nothing in particular, a random configuration of cosmic dust manifested as a steady flow of releases where times, spaces, and musical idioms mix freely. “We are not interested in meaning”, Kawabata Makoto says humbly when we chat before the show, evading my heavy questions about psychedelic music and the message that Acid Mothers Temple bring to folks in this world. And a moment later he adds a comment about humor in music, extending the domain of humor to all of life. Being for Kawabata is already humorous. It’s not about making fun of anything, but about active participation. His idea of making music is less about composing and more about channeling sounds and vibrations from the non-localizable out there to the shifting here by engaging any musical idiom or style at hand.

“Tonight no rock’n’roll, only experimental, Japanese noise”, announces the bassist/Cosmic Joker Tsuyama Atsushi laughing his head off after seven minutes of a rousing improv jam which resembles the ones played since 2007, though always with a difference, keeping the audience anxious about how it’ll go this time. There’s no “Douchebag” this year, at least not in Vancouver or in two other openings from the current Lord Of The Underground/Are We Experimental tour which I have managed to hear so far. For a moment, when the music settles from the all-out discharge into a steady groove, I hear a riff vaguely resembling “Dark Stars”, on top of which Tsuyama’s deep guttural voice, mockingly sinister, mumbles bits and pieces of English words, something about underground and killing. Having done with the intros, he picks up his recorder and blows some Zen air into the mix with Kawabata studiously bent over his guitar with a bow, all this punctured with the toms from Shimura Koji and the cosmic squiggles of Higashi Hiroshi’s synthesizer.

The doors (of perception) are ajar all right, and anybody who has been following them closely over the last two years would know that the next number must be “Dark Stars In The Dazzling Sky.” And so it is. One of their three signature pieces, working very nicely in a live setting, as it makes you sway in a trance, it mesmerizes the Vancouver audience with the steady pulse. Needless to say, there’s nothing experimental here. It’s straight 70s rock before it splintered into a plethora of sub-genres and consumer niches. Aside from the Cosmic Joker improv, which is always unique, this year’s Dark Stars brings no surprises. They played it the same way at Pat’s Pub last April and they probably will again when they come back next year, a pounding rock riff delivering a good fifteen minutes of comfort music to bond with the audience.

Next there’s stuff nobody knows. As I find out later, when I unwrap my new CDs, it’s “Holy Rock’n’Roll Bible” from one the new releases, Are We Experimental. This rocky number resembling Captain Beefheart segues into a lyrical tune featuring Tsuyama playing both sides of his acoustic guitar. Thirty odd minutes into the show out of this loose guitar noodling we settle at last into the ultimate crowd pleaser, “Pink Lady Lemonade,” landing somewhat unexpectedly in the middle of it, in a part which on the monster version from Do Whatever You Want, Don’t Do Whatever You Don’t Want begins around the 40-minute mark. “We don’t have a fixed setlist”, Kawabata warned me before the show. Sure enough stuff happens randomly. Kawabata stumbles in a half-dancing step, as if tired of Cosmic Joker’s maudlin sighing, and the Pink Lady chords begin to flow, just like that, taking us on a forty-minute acid trip through the “Cosmic Soul Death Disco” to “Cometary Orbital Drive” and “Speed Guru” during which Kawabata theatrically hangs his guitar from the ceiling to end the show. The note sequence of the “Cometary Orbital Drive” – as you can read in the liner notes on the album – brings the internal and external spaces together, connecting geometry, antiquity, magic, consciousness, and ecstasy, “awakening the second mind that slumbers behind our consciousness.” Who is to say if this is a cosmic joke, a flashing laser beam of genuine wisdom, or something else no words can describe. Let’s not debate. It was freaking great to be alive and awake at this show.


Vancouver, BC
April 23, 2009

globual"
Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Show: A    Sound: A
Owned by Andrew · Last Updated May 23, 2023