Description
This 2LP documents a collaborative concert between no-introduction-needed Japanese psychedelic titans Acid Mothers Temple and Rosina de Peira, a traditional singer of the Romantic Occitan language. How this meeting of minds between the far-out space rockers and the octogenarian French singer came about is a mystery to me but they seem to rein themselves in somewhat here which actually makes for a consistently listenable album (as fond as I am of AMT I’ll admit that’s not always the case when these spaceheads get really self-indulgent).
Although it’s a recording of a live performance, presumably captured from the soundboard by Kawabata Makoto, the sound quality is excellent throughout the four tracks here. They start with ‘La Novia’, which begins a capella with the singer and band chanting together before diving into scorched earth psych jam with cavernously jangling guitars and whooshing electronics along with an interdimensional Makoto guitar workout, eventually receding back to reveal more chanting to close. Then ‘Pink Lady Lemonade – including Om Riff from The Melting Paraiso UFO’ drifts hauntingly along with picked guitar and spoken vocals in a trance-like slow build into squealing guitar enlightenment.
Things get even more smoky and mystical in slow-burner ‘La Le Lo’, a stalking shuffle with a woozy repetitive bassline cycling around meandering warbled vocals and gently chiming guitars, only to cut off into a bit of group chanting and handclaps that slowly increases in pace before the band kick back in for an all guns blazing stoner-psych assault. Finally there’s ‘Cometary Orbital Drive’ which again begins a capella, quiet enough to hear the chatter of the crowd in the background, before eventually building to a krautrock burble of pulsating rhythms and ritualistic-sounding rhythmic vocal improvisations, with the vocals eventually dropping out to let the hypnokraut chug take centre stage. This is a really cool recording of an unlikely but surprisingly accessible collaboration – acid-fried psych rock freak outs with added chanting.
