New Music From Acid Mothers Temple, Cloning
Acid Mothers Temple
Hallelujah Mystic Garden Part 2
(Important)
Disco Demolition Night, 40 years ago, was the symbolic peak of the “Disco sucks!” sentiment, where attendees at a baseball doubleheader received discounted admission for bringing in a disco record, to be exploded during a between-game ceremony.
Surely we can acknowledge today that there’s good disco, mediocre disco and bad disco, just like any genre, and while a style is in vogue, not only the cream rises to the top.
This writer brings this up because the new album from the Japanese psychedelic rock band Acid Mothers Temple (& the Melting Paraiso UFO) is dominated with disco rhythms and bass lines. Hallelujah Mystic Garden Part 2 follows Part 1 from last year, which seemed to borrow not only from disco but also from Led Zeppelin and German Krautrock (like Amon Düül II and Can). Stealing some disco moves in the rock realm is hardly unprecedented—heck, even Can had a foray into disco with the song 1976 “I Want More”.
Part 2 similarly features two long tracks, starting with a disco version of “Pink Lady Lemonade” that gradually unfurls with a sturdy four-on-the-floor drum kit beat and a simple bass line with octave-separated notes. Soon, a gorgeous melodic pattern—the song’s most recognizable feature—emerges on electric guitar, while synth tones and effervescent electronics swoop in gracefully.
There is a steady flow here, and while it doesn’t seem as pointedly wild as other versions of the track, as the song progresses, the drumming uses more fills and expresses more freedom. Twelve minutes into the song, the lead guitar takes a soaring solo, leading to a climax with wah-wah effects and sick screeching. The group jogs toward the finish line with a gushing rock style, abandoning the disco beats, with a final majestic reprise of the guitar melody.
The second track, “You Never Know Suzuko’s Vice,” begins with electronic noodling and free improvisation, although the guitar cheekily plays the alien-summoning five-note melody from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Soon they get down to business and lock into a dominant groove, although certain note patterns have their own tempos; some vocals enter the picture, with the singers sounding like mousy teenagers, but they just seem to get in the way.
The 13-minute track ends with all cylinders firing and the lead guitarist furiously picking, as if attacking a block of ice. Although the album doesn’t have the reckless, unrestrained abandon of certain other Acid Mothers Temple records, it does have an addictive momentum and a nice balance, especially with the glorious melodies of “Pink Lady Lemonade” injected with a graceful yet potent energy.
Cloning
15 Minutes
(cloning.bandcamp.com)
The Residents’ bizarre 1980 album Commercial Album featured 40 one-minute tracks, reducing pop songs down to the essential minimum and consciously drawing a parallel between commercial jingles and pop music.
The new EP 15 Minutes from Cloning, the Pittsburgh one-man band of Dana Ma (of White Suns), features 15 tracks, each of which is exactly one minute long, and it is quite possibly the polar opposite of The Residents’ Commercial Album—there are no pop music structures here, no jingles, no hummable melodies. The only shared features are that both feature one-minute tracks and are unrepentantly strange.
Ostensibly, on one level, part of 15 Minutes sounds like someone trying out all the different instruments on an electronic keyboard, but that’s because there’s an insanely wide assortment of sounds being used—this would have to be one unique keyboard, since very few of the sounds resemble conventional instruments. If it must be classified, 15 Minutes would fall in the realm of electro-acoustic music, which uses sound reproduction and the editing studio as compositional and creative tools.
Each track is utterly unpredictable, with cut-up madness and blasts of random sonic detritus; audio artifacts are celebrated, not hidden. If there’s any unifying element, it’s the use of largely incomprehensible spoken vocal snippets, although certain phrases poke their heads out of their shells, including someone asking, “Do you guys wanna karaoke?”
The sound of robot insects scurrying leads to clanging metal and a rapid heartbeat, generating unbearable tension; other moments employ watery sounds, synthetic scrapes, hisses, unsettling ringing and splattering waves.
Although there is no organized rhythm on these tracks, the pacing is key; on one track, cosmic beams are perforated with dramatic pauses, while other tracks are a barrage of lawn ornaments caught in a tornado. These are concentrated morsels, crammed with ideas and noises—a series of disorienting jolts, sporting a playful madness.