11 - Makoto Kawabata

I've been semi-obsessed with japanese psychedelic music for a while. Julian Cope's Head Heritage site kept recommending all these amazing things I've never heard about. In passing he mentioned about the Acid Mothers Temple.

"Kawabato Makoto is a beautiful and bearded longhair who has been making music since the late 70s." - Julian Cope

One day I got a phone call from my friend Keil from the band, "The Weirding Way" (now The Vulcans). "Hey Diego you like the Acid Mothers Temple band right? They're going to be playing at my house at 9." Apparently they called his roommate Cody at the record store he works called ZIA, and said, 'We're here from japan and would like to play at your store'. Zia has all this red tape with bands being able to perform there. So, Cody basically said, "Well you can't play here, but you can play at my house."

We were blessed with the current lineup: Tsuyama Atsushi on bass, Higashi Hiroshi on synths, Shimura Koji on drums, and Kawabata Makoto on guitar.

So, I invited everyone who was willing to come, ended up sitting directly in front of Kawabata, and literally had my face melted off. They RIPPED through Pink Lady Lemonade land which they used as the main theme of the set, and they heavily improvised into several other jams. At one point it was ambient, and organic then the focus would change to Tsuyama tearing through bass scales.

"Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them." - Kawabata Makoto

When it was finally time for Kawabata to solo, His guitar was squealing with controlled Feedback, He was making sounds I have never heard a guitar make before. It was at times Coherent, and precisely thought out, and at times the guitar seemed to control him. He lifted the guitar over his head now a roaring beast, and swung it around the room, the feedback was creating SWIRLS of sound he turned on the pitch shifter and slid his foot on the guitar, and the beast let out a hundred screams of delight.

This was definitely an intense learning experience for me. I was most shocked at how SPARSE his pedal board was. A wah, a vintage Big Muff, broken Zoom pedal (possibly modded?), Boss Digital Reverb, Boss Pitch Shifter w/ expression pedal, Fender twin blackface amp. How could this be? How were the sounds I was hearing congruent with this gear? These and many questions I wanted to ask him, but after the show our language barrier was hugely noticeable. I told him that was the greatest guitar experience of my life. He smiled, nodded, handed me a t-shirt and said, "10 Dollars."

At this moment it was clear that I was merely a visitor to the world of psychedelia, but I knew from then on I wanted to be a resident. The Acid Mothers Temple has a huge discography, but to be honest not a lot of it is easily digestable usually they are 20 up to 60 minute jams and freakouts. In fact I had to think of which song to share with you all today. The recordings are usually small sounding, digital, almost live productions, and they just don't hit you with the intensity that the live show does. Here's to hoping they can soon get a proper analog LP produced by someone like Gustav Ejstes or Rick Rubin even Nigel Godrich.


http://www.divshare.com/download/2685376-f1e

I highly reccomend the Myth of the Love Electrique album.

http://www.myspace.com/acidmotherstemple