Just
one day after the Guardian published a
feature on 'The New Generation of Psychedelic Adventurers',
suggesting not so much a revival as psychedelia becoming a touchstone
for contemporary music which aims at a systematic derangement of the
senses - and who should stroll into a local venue?
Exhibit
A (aka Mainliner) are but one of the many side-projects of Acid
Mothers Temple, featuring (in this incarnation) guitarist Kawabata
Makoto, drummer Shimura Koji from the mothership, augmented by Bo
Ningen bassist Kawabe Taigen. Their name, deriving from
taking drugs in an undiluted form, couldn't be more appropriate. For
the trio are channelling quite a specific moment in music history –
1969. After psychedelia had hit on heavy riffs, but before it got
corralled into hard rock.
Typically,
tracks start off with a squall of noise before plunging into a
pummelling riff, often accompanied by space-chant scat vocals. Just
when your eyes become spirals and your brain gets convinced it's all
been going on forever so will presumably carry on in the same vein,
it abruptly turns a corner into something else.
They
can wring a surprising variety of sound from this formula. It's
heavy... it's quite possibly heavier than heavy, but without ever
sounding fixed or confining. It's deranged as a vision-addled shaman
chewing dodgy roots face-down in a ditch, it's as disciplined as a
marching army. It's music to, in Jim Morrison's immortal phrase,
break on through to the other side. Possibly through the use of
explosives.
My
only complaint would be the occasional but persistent outbreaks of
guitar heroics. Okay, this has all been put together by a guitarist
and such stuff was an occupational hazard in the heyday of this
music. But we're not after a note-for-note re-enactment, and we
should be over all that all now. We want the psychedelia that passed
safely through the filter of punk.
Though
a short set, it seemed less a gig than a happening
– and I can't think of finer praise than that, really. It really is
hard to recount without lapsing into the vernacular of the era, and
calling it “spacey,” “far out” or something similar. But then
maybe, like that era, you simply had to be there.
Will a
YouTube clip serve as a replacement? Probably not, but here's one
anyway. From Birmingham, slightly earlier in the tour...
From
an earlier incarnation of the band. But worth linking to anyway.
You'll see why...
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