Acid Mothers Temple

Medicine Bar, Birmingham
3rd April 2002

And so it came to pass, that on the 3rd day in the month of April in the year 2002 that a great darkness of power was unleashed upon us in the form of Acid Mothers Temple, producing a maelstrom of sensory overload.

There stood before us were a collective prodigy sent down from the musical cosmos to feed our heads.
Kawabata Makato has to be the most amazing guitar player I have ever witnessed. It was as if all the demons of Hades had possessed his soul as he became one with his instrument to commit cerebral chaos.

His guitar skills know no bounds as he sadistically ripped his way through every track, playing the thing behind his back, running the neck on the edge of a low beam, throwing it on the floor and running his foot up and down the frets and yet when called upon made it sing like a bird. Sounds a bit like Hendrix I hear you say, yeah, and then some.

Next to him stood the diminutive Cotton Casino. Eyes obscured by her long fringe, peering into the crowd with an inane/ insane grin upon her face, necking down beer and smoking like it was going out of fashion teased her synth to give the cosmic sounds to the whole affair.

Next to her writhed Higashi Hiroshi on guitar, synth and digital theremin type of set up which he he manipulated as if he were a sorcerer trying to unleash the vortex of sound that lay within it.

Tsuyama Atsushi on bass and chanting vocals on La Novia. Superb.

They opened up with "Astrological overdrive" and delivered straight away a merciless onslaught, then they did "In C" to continue to mess the brain, followed by a superb "Pink baby lemonade" which was only hampered by the flutist who unfortunately had no sound coming out of his mike despite his desperate look to attract the sound engineer.

Then came a beautiful annihilation of "La Novia" where Kawabata went berserk on his guitar and after defiantly thrashing the living daylights out of it and stomping off stage, left the rest of the band to introduce their own annialistic renditions.

After that came, well I don't know and to tell you the truth I didn't care by then anyway because my head was swept away on a wave of of pure cosmic mutilation.

Post gig chat was that we at Pooterland, having collectively seen hundreds of bands over the many years reckoned that this gig was up there in the top 5 ever attended.

So whatever you do the AMT are a band NOT to to be missed. You will be taken on a journey that will always be remembered till you leave this world.

Oh yeah, The Heads played in support, this I'm afraid was just one big wall of noise thanks to every sound switch, gizmo and slider pushed to the max and a relentless strobe light that made the lightshow positively not worth having.

The Heads were 3 guys making the stage look overcrowded whereas AMT were 5 and made the stage look large.

It made sense to me anyway.

Words: Sir Eel - 2002