ACID MOTHER’S TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O @ The Hare and Hounds, King’s Heath, Birmingham, 26/04/26
The loudest band that I ever did see, finally. Acid Mother’s Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O, with synth sorceress Cotton Casino, take to the stage at the fading of the dawn, guiding their audience into the night with a sonic revelry that hijacks the solar plexus and infiltrates the prefrontal cortex, leaving the listener with a rewarding sense of confusion and perforated-eardrum-induced migraine, like the warm welcoming ache of lactic acid after intense physical exercise.
Kawabata Makato, founding member of the Japanese transcendental noise-rock collective, launches into the set with a whirlwind of freak-out fuzz-box choreography that matches his wizardly presence, playing or rather groping his upside-down Stratocaster like a demented vanguard Hendrix, scratching at notes that can only exist far past the constraints of the fretboard, right hand over the top of the neck probing for new levels of pitch and tone altogether – diving and heaving his whammy bar with such savagery that the guitar is pulled up into the air, launched into the stratosphere like a U.F.O in both sound and physicality. There are moments when the crowd seem tense, on the edge of panic as Makato appears intent on desecrating his six-string (from the very get-go), conjuring feelings of sympathy for not just his guitar-tech, but for the instrument itself as it is put through its paces, sheer torture, crucified and yanked into a state of near-write-off for the optical and spiritual sake of the spectator.
When Makato’s high-pitched fuzztones seem to reach its ear-bending peaks, fellow founder Higashi Hiroshi hits the room with a surge of synthesised squeals of maximal decibels, sounds wrenched from the cosmos, extraterrestrial screams that battle with the barrage of concentrated distortion now coming from the two stereo-synchronised guitar amps. It is like an acid-rock rendition of the macrocosmic space-jams that came from Jamaican dub-virtuoso Scientist’s mixing desk just months prior, in the very same Venue One of the Hare, deafening torrents of penetrating space-scapes over a backdrop of hallucinogenic maelstrom rather than one-drop beats and rhythmic skanks. The leader of his ship, Hiroshi signals collaborator Cotton Casino (who is adorned in a football jersey that reads D-GENERATE across the back and SUCK IT across the front) to spring into matching synth-play, twisting pitch knobs and flitting through a seemingly random selection of sonics and presets in this on-stage battle between keyboards and strings.
The Melting Paraiso U.F.O continue with their free-form neurological sound-surgery for what feels like an eternity, until the madness seems to come to (almost) an end – the frequency-bending notes of Hiroshi’s motherboard oscillate and trail off into the ether, into another plane of reality altogether, while amplifiers feed sustain into one another, ringing bells of the Band of Gypsy’s legendary ‘Machine Gun’ moment at Fillmore East. Sawano Shozo creeps into the meditative loop, introducing a soft low-end warmth, like a patch of sunspots, from an SG bass in-between the pendulumlike lulls. The gentle hum slowly transforms itself into a crescendo, working its way towards a cathartic climax, a rising chest, lungs holding onto white-hot air before Cotton Casino breaks the strain, finally, this unrelenting strain, with a string of operatic cries, primal and beautiful. The wild outpour allows for the doomy segment of Acid Mother’s Temple’s performance to commence (like a war-cry), subjecting the audience to a cacophony of stoner-rock riffs and throbbing basslines, drenched in the quicksand gunk of Sleep’s Dopesmoker and Electric Wizard’s Funeralopolis. Through sludgy three-note melodies, Makato interjects with episodes of sporadic finger-spasming over the bridge of his guitar neck, an animal clawing at their prey, still anchoring the fuzz-laden desert-blues progression with meditated, untimely precision. Even when Satoshima Nani slows to a half-time dirge, operating outside of the realms of rhythm altogether, it seems, Shozo and Makoto stay afloat, feeling out the vibrations of the atmosphere of their own invention, weaving polyrhythms and harsh-noise into the black, gaping pores of time and space.
Free-form experimentalism makes way for some cranked-out funk – the spirit of Eddie Hazel soars through Makato’s fingers over Nani’s pocketed breakbeats, the raw force of a vintage Marshall-stack caked with Fuzzface and Uni-vibe richness adorning it all. A twenty minute rendition of their beloved ‘Pink Lady Lemonade’ ensues in its drifting, soulful tenderness, before the dead space in between the stage and the audience is penetrated like a painter’s trowel ripping through a canvas as eruptive duel vox and freak-out drum soloing proceeds. Makato, the star of the show, joins the ascending clamour with the help of the crowd – random hands claw at his Strat, lengthening the layers of raucous feedback, the eternal screech of Acid Mother’s Temple.
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