Acid Mothers Temple — Crystal Rainbow Pyramid under the Stars
In the past I’ve found AMT's work full of interesting and clever ideas but more often than not it just was'nt executed in a coherent manner, good ideas were offten streached out to such painful lengths or replaced by haphazardness. They just seem too rough around the edges in a bad way- their albums seemed to be a diamond hunts to find the track or more often the elements that stood out. But this really finds them musically and concept wise firing on all cylinders.
The album starts off with two tracks of dense and spacey 70’s garage rock meets psychedelic meets metal, with new member female vocalist Kitagawa Hao sounding like a demented space witch appearing every now and then out of the rocking and trip out sound stew. The last track Electric Psilocybin Flash which takes up most of the album with it’s 40 minute weight is simple a masterpiece going from Arabic rock riffing, jazzy psychedelic rock that brings to mind Gong- with some very nice Sax playing along the way, to beautiful summer days on mars acoustic guitar meets pastoral & droning electronics. At about the ten mark Kitagawa Hao show’s she can really sing sounding like a lost space angle, contemplating her lost love. Through out its long running time the track never loose your attention or wonders off down indulgent tangents.
I always thought ATM were capable of truly great things and this surely proves me right. All in all a highly accomplished and rewarding psychedelic album.