Acid Mothers Sunday Vol 18: Yamamoto Seiichi & Acid Mothers Temple - Giant Psychedelia

Sorry for the lack, of posts, but you know, the dog days of summer and such... Anyways for this volume of Acid Mothers Sunday we have two tracks from Yamamoto Seiichi & Acid Mothers Temple's awesome double CD, Giant Psychedelia. Usually I try to keep these downloads limited to stuff that is out of print or ultra rare, but it seems that Giant Psychedelia may have slipped through the cracks for a lot of people, so here is a little extra push on this one. I only put two tracks (out of five) in the download, as this one is still available here, here and here at the least, so if you dig it, go buy it!

The scoop on this one is as follows: Live recording from AMT Festival vol. 6 on December 8, 2007. This is dbl CD set with 6 panel card board jacket limited to 1000 copies. Recorded on digital 16 track multi recording system.

Okay, so that is only the tip of the iceberg with this one. Basically to my ears this is some of the most "jam band" sounding AMT stuff ever. Yamamoto Seiichi from Rovo, Omoide Hatoba and the Boredoms is the featured guest here and he and Kawabata trade sun and acid drenched solos all over the fucking place. I always thought Yamamoto's playing in Rovo echoed Trey Anastasio to some degree, and Kawabata does do a truly awes Jerry Garcia, so the Giant Psychedelia/Fillmore West/Japanese Lemon Wheel is ON.

The first track, "High Ball High ~ Third Eye of the Universe" starts things off with a swirling, deceptively easy jam/riff finding Kawabata and Yamamoto's guitars spiraling around each other like mutant, LSD soaked DNA after a light, tentative opening. There is no rush as the jam unfolds. The recording quality is insanely good, this is one of the best sounding AMT releases ever. Even the drums are mixed decently! The wide open background of space noises, easy bass and drums leaves plenty of room for the guitarists to try out some awesome Saucerful of Secrets David Gilmour lyrical licks that start to bunch up and fractal in on themselves. Both Kawabata and Yamamoto (and it is kinda hard to tell where one stops and the other begins on this release) work the ends of the spectrum on Giant Psychedelia, some dainty fretboard dancing with lots of sustain all the way to rock god grinding and pulsing notes firing off like synapses at a 1967 Quicksilver gig. The playing gets better and better, more intense and more intricate as the song goes on and on.

The second tune here, "Third Stone In ~ Pink Lady Lemonade Acid Part 2" starts out like the Grateful Dead coming out of "Space" and into "Dark Star." Not exactly note perfect, but perfect in spirit, this is definitely one of AMT's most Dead moments ever (for now!), the very open background lets the guitarists stretch out and take long echoy riffs for the first few minutes. Slowly a funky, disco wah wah jam takes over and both Kawabata and Yamamoto truly crazy diamond this one into the ground before a very vibrato return to the "Pink Lady Lemonade" riff. The main "Pink Lady Lemonade" riff hangs in the air for a bit before all the players come in and take it into the stratosphere. Totally fantastic and one of the best versions of the signature AMT tune. A longer "Pink Lady Lemonade Acid Part 1" precedes this jam on the actual double CD.

Again, if you like what you hear, definitely pick this one up. It sounds and looks incredible and is one for the jam band AMT heads for sure. It also features Tabata from the Cosmic Inferno version of AMT and former Group Sounds vocalist, Kuriyama Jun.

Yamamoto Seiichi & Acid Mothers Temple - Two Songs from Giant Psychedelia

Acid Mothers Sunday Vol 17: Ohkami No Jikan (LA-026)

The Acid Mothers Temple connection to this La Musica cassette is a tad more tenuous than most of the previous La Musica titles I put up. Basically Nanjo Asahito has kept the line up of this group secret, as Alan Cumming says here:

the group have only properly released a couple of tracks on barely distributed compilations, and here both recording date and line-up are kept deliberately quiet (though this release probably includes Kawabata on guitar).

Alan is talking about the awesome CD Mort Nuit on Fractal Records, but it applies to all Ohkami releases in general. I tend to believe Kawabata is on this release because his sister, Sachiko did the art work for the cassette.

That said there is definitely some confusion regarding LA-026. I bought this either at a High Rise show in 1999 or from Eclipse Records around the same time. I am pretty sure the title was listed as Israel, which makes sense as it contains two versions of the Ohkami signature song, "Israel." I had been trading this as Israel for years but when I looked up this release on the La Musica Tape list as I was putting together this post, things got a bit more hazy. The tape included here, LA-026, is listed in the catalog as Ten no tsumi (Heaven's crime). Israel is listed as LA-020. Things get a tad more complicated when we read the liners of LA-026:

...Members ofmany Japanese underground groups, including Fushitsusha, Les Rallizes Denudes and Kousokuya have participated with Nanjo in Okami No Jikan, pursuing different musical approaches. Depending upon the members and the concept, the sound of this unique group varies dramatically. The one constant is the vibrations emitted by Nanjo. As a psychedelic group that explores all music, from heavy, dark sounds to jazz, contemporary and experimental, Ohkami No Jikan occupies an important position in the Japanese underground scene. On this, their first album, they concentrate on the heaviness of minimal music. Nanjo's engineering and production work questions conventional recording wisdom. Floating aesthetes.

Ok, so.. whew. That is what the liners of LA-026 say, but they say "first album" which would be LA-020, not LA-026. And then, to make it more confusing... these same liners are repeated on Mort Nuit. That said, these versions of "Israel" do not sound like the one on Mort Nuit. I honestly don't know what to think, but here is what the La Musica catalog has to say about LA-026:

Unreleased recordings from the time when the name was used to signify a gatheringplace for disparate musical forms. A mystic work, featuring members of Hadaka no Rallizes and Fushitsusha, that embraces esthetic, mysterious surreal vibrations.

And here they are on LA-020:

Psychedelic group that explores "stasis" and "motion", both actively and philosophically. This includes the final tak of "Israel", a track which they have recorded time and time again. The cool acid heavy sound that reaches the level of the sublime was achieved only after exhausting every other musical form during recording. This is the result of a consciousness prepare to sacrifice and destroy everything it holds dear.

All of this leads me to believe that the tape in question, is actually LA-020, but since the sleeve says LA-026 we will stick with that.
So there you go. The music is somber and dark, sometimes some heavily effected sheets of guitar noises swell the pond and make this one bump into the red on occasion, but it is definitely one of my fave Nanjo releases no matter what it is or who is on it. In November 1998 when Nanjo toured the USA with High Rise, but would open the shows as a version of Ohkami No Jikan with himself on guitar. I know I have a set of theirs with Ed Farnsworth from Bardo Pond (at the time) on drums performing at the sadly missed Astrocade, a show I got to witness that was just insanely awesome and some of the most psychedelic guitar playing ever, from Nanjo on a Rickenbacker no less! I will post that in the future.

I am still not sure what format to use for these, but this time I went for 256kps mp3s. Enjoy.

Ohkami No Jikan - LA-026

Jennifer Herrama is a Birther!?

Oh man.... I am still on my Royal Trux kick, which has spread to RTX and Howling Hex as well. I was checking out this interview with Jennifer from RTX when this jumped right up and punched me in the face:

DD: How about American democracy, do you believe in the whole Obama thing?
JH: I’m kind of stoked that the president’s a black guy, but things move so slowly in politics – it will probably be a hundred years before there’s any palpable change. You’ve got to be careful too. I mean, I did the research and he shouldn’t have been allowed to run for President because he’s not an American citizen. You’ve got to be careful with that because… well, I live in California, and you know that motherfucker Schwarzenegger wants to be President!

Good lord. "The research." Amazing.

Then again, she does bust out this one:

DD: Can you ever see yourself calming down and doing something more laid back? Thurston Moore did that acoustic album recently…
JH: (Laughs) What, when I’m Thusrton’s age? Devendra Banhart did a bad thing because he started making all these people act like idiots!

Devendra Banhart ruined rock for an entire generation! Man those RTX records are fucking great. I kinda passed on them first time around, but they are totally part of my summer 09 soundtrack now. Crunchy!