Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno
IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno

THE REVIEW

Kawabata Makoto is an unusual type. He is probably someone who knows a lot. Surely he is someone who enjoys fooling around and has realized that taking oneself too seriously is harmful. Undoubtedly, he is someone with a strong connection to drugs. In short, someone who stands between wisdom, nonsense, mysticism, madness, and pure hallucinatory goofiness. This being in whom all this is inherent, along with many other good people, has so far produced a discography of significant weight (over a dozen kilograms, I'd say). Many names, many different productions, formations often revisited, but always the same philosophy with the above-mentioned attitudes.

2005: they come out with five albums in a year (nothing unusual) branded for the first time Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno. IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno is picked among these five releases and stands unyielding in proposing music decidedly free from any defined form. In this strong expressive freedom, the comparison with other past records still leads to affirming that this is a more controlled experimentalism, showing more cohesive, more (excuse the term) sensible compositions. As far as I'm concerned, that's better, honestly, I wouldn't know what to do with the sonic booms proposed in other works. There remain, however, extensive jams, psychedelic and delirious, progressive and intricate, with obligatory disorientation.

Those who see in the cover a parody of Camembert Electrique by Gong are not far from the truth, as a large part of the album is a vague and extremely elongated revisitation of IAO Chant/Master Builder by the aforementioned (for the record: there are also the Acid Mothers Gong among various collaborations). The album unfolds according to a pattern very dear to them. Dominating throughout the duration is a single monolithic-song, standing over almost an hour of jams to the point of exhaustion. A mantra followed by inevitable mental journeys in overdrive, reverberations, acidic sounds. Rationality is a completely out-of-place concept for this music of a psychonaut in delirium. Ritual music in continuous procession, which could easily accompany an inexorable mental race at the speed of light, amid pulsating flames and lysergic acid flowing like lava.

An album of ultra-psychedelia in the wild state, an excellent gateway to the universe of Acid Mothers Temple, if not one of their masterpieces present in their unmanageable ocean of discography (random interval: 2002-2005. Leaving aside singles, the albums released in between here are almost 40). Their offer is unfortunately diluted in too vast a production, creating the risk of losing orientation and the core of it all, and that would be a shame for such a musical episode. If so, starting from here is highly recommended.