As Spotify and Grooveshark render the history of recorded music just a few clicks away, so the musical tribe seems to be dying breed.
More and more people are exposed to a wider range of music and fewer feel the need to define themselves by the genre they play or listen to.
Therefore what is really surprising is to come across a band who obviously draw from such a wide range of influences yet end up being so completely unique.
Led by guitarist Kawabata Makoto, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO is a loose collective of Japanese musicians who play mostly instrumental psychedelic and drone rock but that is really only half the story.
Based in a commune-come-spiritual retreat and claiming teachers, ex-Yakuza and members of the Japanese underground music community, they’ve recently settled into a more concrete live line-up but there’s nothing conventional about the music that over the course of an hour and half show flits between modulating flutes and whistles and cataclysmic Zeppelin-like breakdowns, whirring riffs like pistons clanking together and freeform jazzy solos.
Support act Skullwizard set the scene with a set of loose, but incredibly loud doom and drone (though one member of the headliners still appears to be napping behind the merch desk).
They know how to grab your attention but lack the melodic inventiveness to leaven the grind, leaving the audience rather unsatisfied.
In contrast, by the time Acid Mothers Temple depart the stage the audience are well and truly shattered.
Choosing a set list must be difficult for a group who release at least two albums a year (with titles like Journey into the Cosmic Inferno, of course) but over the course of their set they dispatch five lengthy songs, the highlight of which is the half-hour melodic centrepiece ‘Pink Lady Lemonade’, which moves from hypnotic descending guitar figure to hard rock workout through to cosmic space jam via a series of false endings.
Tsuyama Atsushi is one of the world’s most impressive bass players but each member is given plenty of time to showcase their abilities.
Makoto’s final solo sees him move from melodic licks to fearsome shredding and ends with him whipping his guitar around his head, an impressive feat in the confines of Nice N Sleazy.
Their ability to adapt to their surroundings is hugely impressive.
Last time they played Glasgow the open and airy space of Mono became a spacious flower cult but in the basement of Nice N Sleazy Acid Mothers Temple is a far more intense and oppressive experience.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; by the end the audience leave wrung dry and beaten into submission.
Departing without an encore, Acid Mothers Temple is a truly inimitable thing, and that, in itself, is beautiful.
Words: Max Sefton
Photos: John Graham
