Acid Mothers Sunday Vol 14: Nishinihon Live March 19 1999

One of my favorite Acid Mothers Temple spinoffs/side projects is the hard rockin' power trio Nishinihon. The trio of Kawabata Makoto (guitars), Tsuyama Atsushi (bass, vocals) and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu (drums) unleashed their album Can You Smell What Art Rock is Cooking? on the Gyunne Casette label in 2000 and it is pretty much the end game of the AMT WWE/WWF pro wrestling/hard rock "thing" ... though I guess their tours in 2002 (last tours with Cotton) may really be the end of that beloved aspect of AMT. And yes, the line up of Kawabata, Tsuyama and Ichiraku is the exact same as the incredible Kawabata Makoto & The Mothers of Invasion's CD Hot Rattlesnakes, but the sound is very different... While the Mothers of Invasion pump out spiraling, dense clouds of guitar frippery/fuckery/head music, Nishinihion go for the throat, or the groin. Big ass manly man riffs in huge portions, steak. Riffs pile up and over the top, air guitar is mandatory. There is definitely a joke feel to a lot of the album, especially with such song titles as "Ah Dinnae wan tae do owt,ba ah still wan money," "Hoos the fuk that et tha rest o man schoo?" and "Let's Zeppelin'," the whole thing is a grimey celebration of the hard rock deal with Kawabata's guitar notes bending to almost comic (instead of cosmic) lengths, making Eddie Van Halen's donkey kong jumps seem tasteful in comparison. If I was gonna say deconstruction, I woulda done it by now. The CD sold out of it's edition of 1000 pretty much upon release. The 2LP version on Static Caravan seems to be sold out as well. A bummer as it is an awesome piece of the AMT puzzle.

Anyways, for Acid Mothers Sunday Vol 14 we have a short Nishinihon live show from March 19 1999. That is the only info on the CDr that I got in a trade in the early 2000s. It seems this was recorded in Nagoya. Kawabata included a Nishinihon "Improvisation" on his Private Tapes 4 CDr and here are the notes on that recording:

4. IMPROVISATION / Nishi Nihon

* Tsuyama Atsushi : vocal, bass
* Ichiraku Yoshimitsu : drums
* Kawabata Makoto : guitar

Recorded live in Nagoya on 19 March 1999. Tsuyama was a bit under the weather so almost all the songs were improvised. Even now we're hardly ever able to play the songs properly - we're usually too drunk so we end up improvising them instead. This track was previously available as an MP3 on the AMT site.

So there you go. Probably the most stoner rock branch of the AMT tree, good and dumb, but awesome. On this download I have included the live show (titles unknown, please help in the comments if you can, tracks 1-6, though the first two tracks are basically tuning/silence), the improvisation from Private Tapes 4 (track 7) and "Super Station (Hell in a Cell Version)" from the long out of print 2001 UK tour single . It seems this version of their best song was recorded live in 2001. Unfortunately it seems Nishinihon has gone back to Western Japan. I can't recall any live shows in Japan and the last info on their page states that a new version of the band formed in 2003 with Okano Futoshi on drums, but that is about it. There is also an awesome, ragged live album recorded with former Rallizes/Niplets guy Hiroshi Nar on Lexicon Devil.

Also check out some of Ichiraku Yoshimitsu's crazy video/drums/etc. stuff on youtube done under the name Dora Video.


Nishinihon - Live March 19 1999 Nagoya, Japan + bonus tracks