ANDROMELOS

Andromelos' debut album is a collaborative electro-krautrock effort from members of Acid Mothers Temple, Masonna, and Ghost. I'm familiar with both Ghost and Masonna, and I'm quite a fan, although Acid Mothers Temple has always left me cold. It seemed appropriate for me to get this album, and I'm certainly glad I did. This self-titled debut album is psychedlic electronic krautrock and consists of two lengthy tracks.

Something that really sticks out on this album is the obvious influence that each members' other bands have on the sound. Masonna's extreme noisy tendencies, Ghost's moody and imperialistic-like groove, and Acid Mothers Temple's easily identifiable psychedelic guitar jamming.

This album sounds very much like the cover would suggest: spacey and psychedelic. The two lengthy jams on this album that make up the conceptual piece "Tea Breaks Are Under Attack From 2300000 Light Years" are enjoyable, with their spacey atmosphere with strange experimental electronic manipulations and extraterrestrial noises coupled with trippy attitude, but it isn't really anything new. This is undoubtedly new for the members involved with this project, but this album comes off sounding like a really good Can and Amon Duul II collaboration. Since this isn't groundbreaking, but does sound like previously groundbreaking bands, my overall impression on this album is very good. I've never been one to "trip", but this album does serve as great motivation for that cause.

Highly recommended for fans of trippy, psychedelic, electronic krautrock from Japan. Totally, peace, man.

Andromelos is a super group from Japan's thriving psychedelic scene. The band consists of Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple, Yamasaki Maso from Space Machine and Okano Futoshi from Ghost. With such big names in one band this should be one heck of an album! Right?...

Wrong. This album made me scratch my head several times saying "Haven't I heard this before?". You would think these artists would try and do something different than what they normally do, but they played it safe, or rather too safe. Makoto definitely seems like the main composer on this project (or at least the most influential) because this sounds something that Acid Mothers Temple would normally do, maybe a bit spacier and less chaotic than the usual Acid Mothers Temple jam, but its still practically the same. The other two members sound like if they where part of AMT and playing like if it was their own band instead of playing as a group like they suppose to. There's no coordination and that's the main problem.

The whole time length of the album doesn't help either. It's one song called "Tea Breaks Are Under Attack From 2300000 Light Years" divided in two. The first part lasts 40 minutes and the second one 30+ minutes. In the end the album could've been far less shorter and maybe it could've been more enjoyable, but it being 70+ minutes in length just doesn't work.

I really liked the idea of these three guys playing together, I really do, but their biggest problem is their lack focus even if we're talking about a jam oriented band (think about that for a while). The spacier parts in the album are definitely the best moments of the album. Personally I'm getting a bit tired of AMT's formula and that's why I don't enjoy this release as much as I want to. So I can only recommend this to Acid Mothers Temple fans looking for a similar style, but in a less frantic and more spacier way.