Acid Mothers Temple - Wolverhampton Varsit

  by David McNamee

published: 12 / 1 / 2002

intro

“YRRreooUgHhwAaAaAAHHHH!! LililililiPEOWgarghhhhh!!” Satan only knows what language the Circle are speaking in, but whatever it is they appear to be singing it backwards. Even scarier, their frontman appears to be Graham Bonnet possessed by the voiceover

“YRRreooUgHhwAaAaAAHHHH!! LililililiPEOWgarghhhhh!!” Satan only knows what language the Circle are speaking in, but whatever it is they appear to be singing it backwards. Even scarier, their frontman appears to be Graham Bonnet possessed by the voiceover woman from The Exorcist. What with his one studded leather wristband, black canvases and 70s tinted aviator shades the man cuts an inimitable figure countered only by the presence stage left of the Circle’s hulking godhead bass player. Eyes rolled back into their sockets, blonde afro swishing back and forth, muttering occasional invocations to the unnameable (or to one of the eponymous Neu albums at least) his mantric spine-numbing bass figures seal the Circle’s juggernaut krautrock black metal into the sort of messianic firmament left unoccupied since Spacemen 3. Topping it all, in one graceful move, the man-mountain four-stringer crashes straight onto his bear-like back and drags Dante’s Inferno screaming out of his bass cab. Awesome. The Acid Mothers Temple ‘Soul Collective’ led by avant-garde guitar renegade Kawabata Makoto consists of around 30 musicians, artists, dancers and, bizarrely, farmers. Appearing tonight in their …And The Melting Paraiso UFO guise, the line-up is thankfully stripped down to a five-member core although the noise they make with just guitar, bass, drums and synth still sounds unfathomable, like something torn from the sky. Their uninterrupted hour-long set may begin inauspiciously enough with a tentative, dreamy guitar motif but before long their propulsive Can-like momentum is shredded into wall-to-wall noise, Kawabata ringing sheer blitzkrieg out of his instrument, making it bleed. Perplexingly though, given the self-indulgent tendencies of these kind of outfits, the Temple never concede to aimless meandering feedback. It is remarkably focused, efficient stuff. It just possesses the capacity to pop your brain cells like bubblewrap. Take a look at the three nutcases down front, boggling Bez-like throughout, one of whom will spend the entire second half of the set gazing open-mouthed at the speaker stack like he’s just discovered The Monolith. The collective wrap up their excursion taking in psychedelia, krautrock, Japanese noise and whip-cracking electro with a 20-minute freakout that briefly sends their signal into space before descending into a Flight of The Navigator flyby of the West Midlands. Now that’s what I call a ‘sonic boom’. Makoto cautiously returns to the stage and dangling a mangled Stratocaster from one finger peers forlornly out into the audience. "Guitar broke" he says.

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