Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno: Iao Chant from the Cosmic Inferno (2005)

This Japanese band, Acid Mothers Temple has got to be one of the most prolific of modern psychedelic bands out there, going through many different styles and even names. The original incarnation (formed in 1996) was called Acid Mothers Tempel & The Melting Paraiso UFO. The band also had a habit of spoofing album covers and titles, covers that spoofed King Crimson’s Earthbound, Steeleye Span’s Ten Man Mop, Gong’s Camembert Electrique, etc., and titles like Absolutely Freak Out, which you know right away came from Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention (Absolutely Free, Freak Out!), Starless and Bible Black Sabbath (coming from King Crimson, and Black Sabbath, of course), and Have You Seen the Other Side of the Sky (reference to Gong’s “Other Side of the Sky” which appeared on their 1973 album Angel’s Egg). This group also recently collaborated with Gong on their album Acid Motherhood (2004). There’s also a version of the band called Acid Mother Gong.

Now comes the most recent version of Acid Mothers Temple, called Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno. Thanks to the band’s collaboration with Gong, and the unfortunate death of Gong drummer Pierre Moerlen in 2005, the band decided to make a recording in dedication to him, and that is a 51 minute rendition of Gong’s “Master Builder” (the original, of course, appeared on Gong’s 1974 album, You), which is on this 2005 CD, Iao Chant from the Cosmic Inferno (in which the cover spoofs Gong’s Camembert Electrique). Others have covered this song before: Steve Hillage did on his 1978 album Green (no surprise, as Hillage appeared on You), and Ozric Tentacles performed this piece too in their early days and you can hear their version off their early cassette Live Ethereal Cereal (1986), so Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno decided to do their stab at it. The results: unsurprisingly not unlike Gong, with the wildness of Ozric Tentacles! The group at this point consisted of Tabata Mitsuru on bass, Higashi Hiroshi on electronics (mainly Tim Blake-like synth bubbles), Shimura Koji on drums, Okano Futoshi on additional drums, and Kawabata Makoto on guitars and hurdy gurdy. I tell you Kawabata Makoto is one wild guitar player and he certainly gives Ozric Tentacles’ Ed Wynne a run for his money!

The music starts off with some rather trippy Buddhist chanting, and then the music starts kicking in with the familiar “Iao” chant (familiar if you heard the original “Master Builder”), with some really intense moments that’s certain to rival the Ozrics! You obviously hear some familiar themes, but then they also give their own twists too. I really like how the music mellows out in one section and Makoto gives us some really trippy glissando guitar, before the band gets picking up again. There’s a section where Makoto lays it thick with lots of feedback and distortion, which is alien on a Gong or Ozric album. There is no singing, unlike the Gong original, just the occasional chanting.

Since I hadn’t heard the other stuff from Acid Mothers Temple, I have to tell you I’m not able to compare this to their other stuff, although I realize a lot of their albums are quite different from one another, but apparently all have that spacy psychedelic feel. But Iao Chant from the Cosmic Inferno is that one album from them I highly recommended to all Gong and Ozric fans since the music is very much in the same vein!