Acid Mothers Temple must be seen live, obviously.

The afternoon of the show I started feeling nostalgic for all the times I have almost seen this band in the past because I almost didn’t see them again. (I was late getting a paycheck. It’s always something dumb.) But at the last minute things came through and off I went. I told myself it didn’t matter that much anyway—there was a moment of panic where I thought I would never see them now, what with them saying this is their last tour in America and all—but wouldn’t these guys be deep into the 2012 thing? It’s a psych band. Yeah, if the world is ending, this would be the last tour wouldn’t it. Sure enough, the tour poster has a Mayan calendar symbol right damn in the middle:

I do not think the world is ending, not this year anyway. But some people might disagree with me. The opening acts on this tour for example. The AMT set seemed typical, a mind-melting performance, but nothing that suggested impending retirement or cosmic extermination. No goodbyes, barely any audience interaction at all. But these other guys really set the mood for apocalypse. All shrewd marketing maybe, art even. Really you can’t ask for a better theme.

I got there early for once and they had movie screens up showing a Rolling Stones concert. Really good one, must be the new DVD (of old shows). No pressure, bands, just following the Rolling Stones in their prime. It’s cool. So I was just watching in the balcony and things eventually get interrupted with a blast of harsh noise from down below. This would be Clang Quartet. No idea what this would be and it turns out to be just one guy who may or may not sincerely be into Jesus, a lot. Like, it’s hard to tell if a Noise musician is really trying to “say” anything, first off. The fact that one guy is calling himself a quartet further skews the initial impression towards wacky nihilism. And if you only listened, it would seem like a standard noise act involving a harsh wall of overdriven pedal feedback and unintelligible shrieks with some floor percussion thrown in (literally, from individual toms and an interlocking sheet of broken cymbals laid out in front of the stage). But if you put all the associated props, banners, masks and full-size cross/guitar contraption into a shopping cart, this guy would not be out of place on a street corner. Altho in that setting, you’d be able to tell what he was yelling and maybe figure out if there was some kind of satire or irony to it. But then why would he be on the street corner? Act like that you gotta take on the road, only thing that makes sense.

Next was The Phantom Family Halo. They had a clever scrolling LED display to remind you of their name, highly recommend. They started with what seemed to be a kind of ritual and the two guys that came out first looked like cult members in matching outfits. They had some spooky intro music they did a weird swaying dance to before kneeling down and fully bowing to the floor to the screen on the back wall which now had blurry projections of random things. They then slowly got up and took their respective places behind the keyboard and percussion set. They had on wifebeaters with inverted black triangles (which used to mean Lesbian but know I guess it means I Am In a Spooky Cult You Cannot Understand.) Whatever, points for style. Then the rest of the band came out and started tuning their guitars, they looked like a normal rock band. So much for that. But they played in almost total darkness except for the projection and occasional laser beams. Quite the setup at JB’s now. Smoke machine and everything. It looked really cool, the kind of thing you can’t really get a good picture of. I did try, like I tried to transfer the files from my phone to a memory card to my computer without deleting all of them without a trace, but you know, experiments fail. Btw, this band was really good. At playing music I mean. In fact, if you’d judge a band just by keyboard and sax solos alone they were better than AMT who use those instruments as noisemakers pretty much. I had a clear view from above the whole show and nary a key is pressed on Hiroshi Higashi’s sweet Roland synth. It’s all knob-fiddling. Some crazy frequencies from that; it seemed much louder than any of the punk or metal shows I’ve been to lately. The sound really gets into your skull.

But these are rock bands and it’s mostly about the guitar. The band lays down a groove and when Makoto Kawabata cuts loose it’s off the chain, out the window and into outer space. They have songs, but it’s mostly about the freakout. I think they played Pink Lady Lemonade 3 times. (Various versions.) There’s the bass too. Koji Shimura gets proggy, almost Zeuhl-y. But they’re more about feeling than precision and that’s just something thrown into the soup. (while him doubling on soprano sax helped get that feeling, dude is clearly not a real sax player.) Then there’s the hair…really the overall stage presence of Kawabata and Hiroshi on twin lead hair is phenomenal (If you don’t know what I mean fortunately I have a flickr contact who is much better at taking pictures than me, but you really have to see it in person.) Backup hair was no slouch but I don’t know who the 2nd guitarist was. (Wiki only lists 4 current members.) The drummer is balding and seems like the oldest, but showed no signs of fatigue and laid it down pretty heavy even on a couple uptempo tunes. They played at least 2 hours with one encore, I think they even had a second in them, but the crowd had enough. People just started heading out when that encore ended, it was like a weird unanimous crowd action. We were vibed out. Great show tho. If it was the last I guess it was the best.

I hope I can find those pictures. %