We Have Heaven and Shinji Masuko @ Good Weekend Oct 5 2011

UPDATE: Great show, some video here:

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 15: Musica Transonic & Yamataka Eye (LA-049)

So this time around, for Vol 15 of the Acid Mothers Sunday series we venture into the world of free rock band Musica Transonic. Muisca Transonic is the same line up as second album Mainliner, Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple, etc) on guitar, Nanjo (High Rise) on bass and Yoshida (Ruins) on drums. The difference between the two groups is more theoretical than audible in my ears. While Mainliner were slaves to the riff, Musica Transonic are free, improvised rock and do seem to push and push the boundaries of song more than Mainliner. They have a bunch of CDs on PSF and some other labels, plus a bunch of La Musica cassettes as well.

This one has Yamataka Eye from the Boredoms on a few songs and features two decently recorded (with that patented Nanjo in-the-red production) live shows from July 1996 in Japan. Kawabata's guitar definitely takes on more of the free echoed out Strat sounds, bashing and spazzing into the other instruments and then blazing right over them with long washes of almost out of tune sheets of 'casterness. Nanjo's bass lurches and bounces like someone trying to play basketball with a Nerf football. Yoshida's drums sound fantastic and his playing is more suited to this style than Mainliner. His fills and drive are amazing and I love the sharp snare sound he gets, it reminds me of Peter Moffett from Government Issue. Eye shows up about five or six songs in, screaming his head off making his shredded voice another free'd up instrument. A surprisingly good edition to the heavy psych squall. That said, the title is a bit of a misnomer, as Eye only appears on a few songs. Eye heads, be warned, this is way more of a live Musica Transonic release than a true equal footing collab.

I transferred this to CDr years ago and it seems I got the tracking wrong or something. My transfer has 15 tracks total, but the cassette label lists 17 tracks, so I must have combined some songs. Sorry about that! Also, the tracks are in some symbol language deal, I just used numbers. This one carries the La Musica catalog number LA-049. Lets see what the La Musica catalog has to say:

World-shakng speed-freak free sound featuring the unique Yamatsuka Eye, one of the few people in the world on the track of a fusion of noise and minimalism. Mutli-track recording of an astounding high tension live performance that will blow off the top of your head

So yep, there you go. Enjoy!

Musica Transonic & Yamataka Eye (LA049)

boredoms & black pus @ starlight ballroom april 2 2008

A nice big show at the Starlight Ballroom. Crowded, but not crazy packed and definitely not as "sold out" as the last time the Boredoms played here. Missed Soft Circle and hand beers til Black Pus started. Black Pus is Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt doing a one man-drummer band thing and I was pretty hyped to see the deal in the flesh, as watching that dude play drums is truly a beautiful site. Man/instrument meld, ya know? So this is him with tons of triggers and samplers and his kit. Total f'n destruction as they say. I was watching from the back and for the life of me could not tell where the samples ended and his playing started. Incredibly tight break beats played live with viscous waves of grating noise/hip hop samples/ guitar-bass throb. And he wears a creepy mask. Insanely loud (but clean), pummeling. Brutality, but with a head nodding beat attack for sure.


Boredoms took the stage with Eye using those light balls he had last time, a weird drone theremin sound. On stage with Eye and the 3 drummers was a crazy sculpture of six guitars and basses welded together, with the necks sticking out, three to a side. Eye would hit the strings with drum sticks or mallets and create a solar plexus trampoline for the duration of the drone. This time around things had a little bit more variety than the massive trance out hypno drum circle of last time. Even the little techno thing in the middle had a bit of a different arrangement. Towards the end when Eye was hitting the guitar armed thing in a way that formed a melody out of the massive drone, well shit it was just awesome. Alas, I wasn't loaded enough to try to work the handicapped angle and get on stage to take pictures like last time, sorry!