concert review: Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. in NK, Berlin

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. 

Last monday I had the great pleasure to see Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. in NK - a cool place for alternative and experimental music in Berlin (where I've been performing last june). I utterly enjoyed their powerful and noisy psychedelic post-rock, and I am very interested in their artistic process evacuating the issue of novelty (that is often problematic in improvised music or dance in my opinion) by totally diving into psychedelic genre, using all the expected sounds and licks, and able then to focus on pure intensity and communion. I've had similar experience with butoh pieces that some people thought too cliché because they always expect something looking new, where I was marveled by the physicality and acuteness of the dancers.

So yes you could dance yourself into trance at their concert, but you could also take it as a pure musical moment - just like you can listen to a Johann Sebastian Bach mass without having to go to church! Of course Kawabata Makoto shone at the guitar, combining slide cosmic whispers with chaotic shredding and heavy riffs - almost made me feel like playing a stratocaster (though he wasn't playing his famous left-hand strat - I always thought that if I'd play one, I'd do the same and play reverse!). And other musicians are not just supports, they are such a powerful rhythm section that they could send the building into outer space!

A great moment (at the exception of the two stupid headbangers who arrived late and stood just in front of me when I was already on the first rank, and danced as if they were at a Motörhead concert in 1985 - I know what I'm talking about, I was there, but I grew up since)!

Edit: I didn't mention gear, but I was agreeably surprised to see that the musicians of AMT avoid the current trend of indulging in vintage/custom guitars plugged in a impressive line of boutique pedals. They play with basic Fenders - Precision Bass, Telecaster, Stratocaster - and each have no nonsense Zoom G2s multimeffects, a couple of Boss pedals - a looper for the bass a.o. -, a wah, a big handmade unknown metal cased pedal, that's it... Considering the sonic mayhem they can produce, it's all the more impressive!