Acid Mothers Temple

DISCOGRAPHY

Dark Revolution Collective: Dark Revolution Collective (1978) 6/10

Makoto Kawabata: Psychedelic Noise Freak (1980) 6/10

Makoto Kawabata: Osaka Loop Line (1981)

Toho Sara: Kami no Miya (1993)

Toho Sara: Eastern Most (1995)

Tsurubami: Tsurubami (1995)

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO (Nov 1997) 7.5/10

Tsurubami: Tenkyo No To (May 1998)

Kawabata: Gesseki no sho (May 1998)

Pataphisical Freak Out Mu (Mar 1999) 7/10

Toho Sara: Mei Jou Tan Sho (1999)

Wild Gals a Go-Go (Nov 1999)

Tsurubami: Kaina (2000)

Kawabata: You Are the Moonshine (2000)

Kawabata: Inui (2000)

Kawabata: Inui 2 (Oct 2000)

Monster of the Universe (EP, Feb 2000)

Troubadours From Another Heavenly World (Sep 2000) 6/10

La Novia (Oct 2000) 6.5/10

Kawabata: Jisetsu (Sep 2000)

In C (2001) 4/10

New Geocentric World (2001) 6.5/10

Absolutely Freak Out (Feb 2001) 6/10

Kawabata: Hot Rattlesnakes (Aug 2001)

Kawabata: I'm in Your Inner Most (Dec 2001)

Kawabata: Infinite Love (Jan 2002)

Kawabata: Musique Cosmique Electro-Acoustique (Feb 2002)

41st Century Splendid Man (2002) 4/10

St Captain Freak Out (Aug 2002)

Electric Heavyland (Oct 2002) 7.5/10

Univers zen ou de zéro à zéro (2002) 7/10

Tsurubami: Tsukuyomi ni (2003)

Tsurubami: Gekkyukekkaichi (2003)

Rebel Powers: Not One Star Will Stand the Night (2003)

Mantra of Love (Apr 2004) 6/10

Does the Cosmic Shepherd Dream of Electric Tapirs (Sep 2004) 6/10

Toho Sara: Hourouurin (2004)

Kawabata: O Si Amos A Sighire A Essere Duas Umbras (Feb 2004)

SWR: SWR (April 2004) 5/10

Minstrel in the Galaxy (2004) 5/10

Kawabata: Jellyfish Rising (Oct 2004)

Close Encounters of the Mutants (Nov 2004)

Penultimate Galactic Bordello (2004) 5/10

Kawabata: Inui 3 (2005)

Tsurubami: Shohjohkisshohtan (2005)

Demons From Nipples (May 2005) 6.5/10

Anthem of the Space (Jun 2005) 5.5/10

Just Another Band From the Cosmic Inferno (Jul 2005)

Iao Chant From the Cosmic Inferno (Sep 2005) 7/10

Starless and Bible Black Sabbath (Feb 2006)

Have You Seen the Other Side of the Sky (Jun 2006) 6/10

Kawabata: Hosanna Mantra (2006)

Myth of the Love Electrique (Nov 2006)

Ominous From the Cosmic Inferno (Mar 2006)

Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under the Stars (2007)

Kawabata: Inui 4 (2007)

Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo (2007) 6/10

SWR: Stones Women & Records (2007)

Acid Motherly Love (Aug 2007)

Tsurubami: Tenrin (2007)

Cometary Orbital Drive (2008)

Interstellar Guru and Zero (Apr 2008) 5/10

Recurring Dream and Apocalypse of Darkness (May 2008)

Journey Into the Cosmic Inferno (Jun 2008) 6.5/10

Glorify Astrological Martyrdom (Sep 2008) 6/10

Lord of the Underground (Oct 2008)

Kawabata: Tales of the Dream Planet (2009)

Dark Side of the Black Moon (2009)

Are We Experimental (2009) 4.5/10

In 0 to ∞ (2010)

Kawabata & à qui avec Gabriel: Golden Tree (Mar 2011) 5.5/10

For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Goofy Funk (2011)

Ripper at the Heaven's Gates of Dark (2011)

Pink Lady Lemonade You're From Inner Space (2011) 4/10

Son of a Bitches Brew (June 2012) 4.5/10

Chaos Unforgiven Kisses (2012)

Doobie Wonderland (Oct 2012) 5/10

In Search of the Lost Divine Arc (May 2013) 6/10

Black Magic Satori (Nov 2013) 5/10

Astrorgasm From the Inner Space (May 2014) 5/10

SWR: Yes No & Perhaps (2014)

Benzaiten (May 2015) 5.5/10

w/ Bardo Pond: Acid Guru Pond (2016) 5/10

Wake to a New Dawn of Another Astro Era (2016)

Wandering the Outer Space (2017)

Those Who Came Never Before (2017)

Either the Fragmented Body or the Reconstituted Soul (2017)

Electric Dream Ecstasy (2018)

Reverse of Rebirth in Universe (2018)

Sacred and Inviolable Phase Shift (2018) 5/10

Hallelujah Mystic Garden Part Two (2019)

w/ Geoff Leigh: Chosen Star Child's Confession (2020)

Zero Diver or Puroto Guru (2020)

Demi-Demoniac Daemoog (2022)

Gassha (2022)

Paralyzed Genius Brain (2023) 4.5/10

Holy Black Mountain Side (2024)

   The Acid Mothers Temple is the brainchild of composer and guitarist Makoto Kawabata after his projects Dark Revolution Collective, Toho Sara, and Tsurubami. Hiroshi Higashi was the other core member of the band with his remarkable taste in electronics that echo the synthetic squeaks of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Henry. Their career explored the extremities of the experimental and psychedelic wave of the 1960s-70s, progressed further by exotic fusions of various trance-inducing aesthetics (African tribal rhythms, free jazz, harsh noise, drone, avant-garde opera, Gregorian chant, etc.) that prove Kawabata as an intellectual peer to his influences (Grateful Dead, Zappa, Miles Davis, Amon Duul, Hendrix, Gong, etc.) rather than a mere revivalist. The band represents another apex of the "extreme" Japanese rock underground likened to High Rise, Boredoms and Keiji Haino. 

   By now, Kawabata has also achieved one of the most aggressively prolific profiles in the history of music, having released over seven hundred records credited with his name, often releasing several albums within the same year and touring at the same time. 

  Born in Osaka, 1965, Kawabata first became enamored with music after hearing a tamboura on TV when he was ten. From the band website FAQ, he commented "from when I was a kid I’d always hear these phantom ringing sounds in my ears, and I was convinced that it was UFOs trying to communicate with me." He later spoke of his first time hearing electronic Stockhausen pieces on the radio: "It was just like someone had turned the ringing in my ears into music." He would later describe this ringing as the "sound of the cosmos" in an interview with Fifteen Questions. When asked about his creative process, Kawabata responded, "Improvise, compose, arrange, play, it's all the same for me, so all of my music is improvised. But strictly speaking, my music comes from the cosmos, so I can't really use the word compose. My cosmos tells me everything, what and how I should play. That’s all."

   Whether this "ringing" in his ears was tinnitus or some intuitive frequency he carried with him, this drove his obsession with music immediately, and he promptly began to pursue manifesting it at age 13. 

      Kawabata wrote on the FAQ, "The reason why I decided to start playing my own music was that I searched everywhere for the music that I wanted to listen to, but I’d never been able to find it. The only way left to me was to create it myself, so in 1978 I formed my first group Ankoku Kakumei Kyodotai (translated as Dark Revolution Collective) with a couple friends I used to listen to music with. However, at the time we didn’t own any instruments and we’d only been able to borrow a single synthesizer. Our playing was basically improvised, but listening to it subjectively you can tell that we were always trying to create some sort of song structure so what we were doing was completely different to so-called free music." 

   Hence Dark Revolution Collective was recorded, each member playing an assembly of random percussion while Kawabata added a surreal layer of background drones on synthesizer. 

   In the same year of Dark Revolution Collective, Kawabata alone recorded Psychedelic Noise Freak, released through a limited number of cassettes in 1980. Dismissing the percussive ensemble, Kawabata leads the album through jittery synths and oscillators, virtually his tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen. Kawabata wrote: "I had started creating some solo pieces at the same time, musique concrete type things using lots of drones. These were my first hesitant attempts at creating music that turned the ringing sounds in my ears into some kind of structured piece." 

   The five pieces border on bleep-bloop droning but at least manage to mutate and deconstruct with the different effects of bit-crushed distortion and resonant squealing. 

   Both releases would basically be unknown to listeners until their archival reissues in 2001. 

   Despite some bad blood after argumentative run-ins from the past, Kawabata recruited Hiroshi Higashi on bass for the band Tsurubami in 1994. After finding they shared similar views on music improv/composition, he would thereon become Kawabata's most critical collaborator. 

    After putting Higurashi on synthesizer, a collage of jam sessions and Zappa-esque studio work culminated in Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO (ignoring their other self-titled releases, this one was from November 1997). As far back as 1978, Kawabata wrote "I dreamt of how cool it would be to find a record that combined hard rock like Deep Purple with the electronic music of Stockhausen." Through Acid Mothers Temple, that vision finally manifested. 

   The Penultimate Galactic Bordello Also the World You Made would compose of four pieces that each equate or exceed the runtime of an hour, essentially a quadruple-LP. The efforts and ideas are not insubstantial: there are jarring Zappa-esque studio collages, droning monasterial ambience (especially at the start of Holly Mountain In the Counter-Clock World), a riot of jazzy accompaniment in The Seven Stigmata From Pussycat Nebulaand, both heavy and light guitar jamming, and colorful electronics. But at a four-hour duration, it fails to convince me that a beefy portion of it isn't just filler.

   Are We Experimental mostly exploited the free-form guitar-noise/jam sessions of Jimi Hendrix coupled with Higashi's typical spurts of bubbly synth-whistles. 

   As the Acid Mothers Temple and Space Paranoid, Black Magic Satori was a three-piece set of jamming inspired by Black Sabbath riffs, with the song Space Paranoid being pretty much an outright cover of Black Sabbath's Paranoid. 

   They would write on their Bandcamp: "We were determined to draw a line between us and the many doom metal and black metal bands who have also been inspired by Black Sabbath. To this template we have added sixties psychedelic elements, as well as an improvisational approach (something that Sabbath virtually never do live), and we have attempted to reconstruct their songs in heavier and spacier way."

    The results would fare typical procedures of spacey reverb, fuzz guitars and whistling synths, albeit with singer Mitsuru Tabata providing more song-like vocals rather than the abstract moaning that populate most of the band discography.