Shred Room 56: Saqqara

also I almost completely forgot about it since I ordered the tickets about a month ago but I'm finally seeing the Acid Mothers Temple live tonight!!!

So yes, I had almost forgotten that I had bought tickets for this, only remembered wednesday to check when it was again... and then I saw that if I would go there straight away from work I would be over an hour late but luckily there was also an opening act I didn't care about at all. So I took the two hour plus train ride, crossing my fingers that I wouldn't miss anything and luckily when I got there they were just setting up. I flinched a bit to actually see the band there, stared for a while and then went to get a beer. 

They started pretty soon with one of their more disorganized jams, very loudly. They played with their relatively new line-up, with a younger bassist and drummer and Kawabata Makoto, Higashi Hiroshi and Tabata Mitsuru. Tabata was fully in drag with a green wig, fake breasts and a flower necklace. Then Higashi pulled a harmonica and played some over the top improv which started off sounding like a mockery of Supertramp's School but then gradually got more loose, punctuated by a couple of heavy riffs before they went into full noise again. I recognized the riff from their Starless and Bible Black Sabbath track. 

At the end of this second jam Higashi's synth had broken down and after messing with the wiring throughout the duration of the next jam he decided to get his small back-up synth from the back of the crowd, which did the same and sounded the same so no biggie. For the third jam the rhythm section started an odd, sweaty disco beat as Tabata took off his guitar and started doing some exotic dancing with some hand fans as the crowd cheered him on, mind you this was a pretty chubby 50-year old dude... As the beat continued the guitarists started weaving up some feedback, building tension before suddenly Kawabata introduced the Pink Lady Lemonade theme, which I had never heard of these chords but damn was it a blast. 

After a short intermission with Higashi messing about on his synth they started a more twisted jam, basically a noise-fest with constantly fluctuating tempo and crazy riffs in between, then moving from that into a jam around their OM Riff(actually from Gong's Master Builder), with another extensive build-up with Kawabata getting crazier and crazier with his guitar as the concert went on. Went they finished this in another noisy climax Kawabata pulled out a another kind of electronic device, making some strange electronic noises together with Hiroshi before falling into an arpeggiated loop(I guess it was an arpeggiator, I don't know how these things look), over which the rhythm section pulled basically a techno-type beat, making the whole thing sound like some noisy acid techno as everyone started dancing like crazy, building up to a kind of beat drop chord(you know the type) to get straight back into rock mode while staying mighty funky. 

For the last jam Kawabata pulled a kind of guitar-stroking device, giving it a bit of a spacey hurdy-gurdy sound. After a while Tabata introduces the spacey riff from Cometary Orbital Drive and the band start their last looong build-up with increasing tempo as Kawabata and Tabata twist their guitar into every possible position, the former flipping it upwards into the air, the latter twisting it around behind his back. Kawabata's actions make a lot more sense when at the very end, he hangs his guitar by that tremolo stick thing on a wire by the roof, just scratching the fretboard a bit as the jam has descended into noise again for the last bit.

Only when the show was finished did I feel confident enough to get a second beer and some cash money for the merch table. I got Higashi, Tabata and the bassist(I don't know his name (yet)) to sign my Absolutely Freak Out CD and I bought a black tour T-shirt and their live CD with Rosina de Peira. I tried to joke around with Higashi a bit but both his hearing and his English are somewhat limited so all I got out of him was that AFO was also his favorite CD! Not sure if he was just telling me what I wanted to hear but okay. Went to take the last train home after that, only got home around 3:30 but it was definitely worth it.

I might recommend Pataphysical Freak Out MU for being an accessible blend of styles(after the opening track at least) or perhaps Crystal Rainbow Pyramid for being a more conventional energetic jam band style record if you're interested