Review Summary: If there were sound in outer space, this would be it.
Acid Mothers Temple has always been somewhat of an enigma. Over the course of just 14 years, they have released a ***ing monumental total of 42 LPs, all comprising of the most revolutionary, obscure music that has possibly ever come across the acid-infused human consciousness. Beyond comprehensible to listen to, let alone describe, ‘Pink Lady Lemonade’ is a mark on musical limits and a legacy to LSD and its stupefying effects.
To get in perspective how weird this is, you’ll have to realize that these guys were probably tripping balls the whole time recording. In fact, they probably always are tripping balls judging by how much material they make. Describing their music is like skinning a lipid newt with a blunt piece of turtle shell made out of chocolate. It’s relatively difficult. But basically, if you were to play this near some whales (McDonald’s or the Pacific Ocean would be good enough), they would start rolling on the floor moaning that they are in a hyena’s stomach. Assuming that whales had a floor to roll on and prior knowledge on what exactly a hyena is. If you were to record yourself trying to mimic the noises on this album and then put it on playback, it’ll sound something like the backwards version of Stairway to Heaven and you’ll probably be accused by fundamentalist christians of Satanism.
The inspirations aren’t hard to pick out, you can even grasp it from their LP names themselves; Electric Heavyland, 41st Century Splendid Man, Are We Experimental?, Dark Side of the Black Moon: What Planet Are We On?, The Ripper At The Heaven's Gates Of Dark , St. Captain Freak Out and the Magic Bamboo Reques and Starless and Bible Black Sabbath. There are a whole assortment of obvious influences come both straight out of the 60’s, 70’s and the electronic music of this day. What is so impressive is how Acid Mothers Temple successfully mixes this wide arrangement of genres together as if it was a cup of tea or something. The fusion of sounds that come out of one compilation in itself is absolutely astounding. At the start of You’re From Outer Space (Part 2), for example, it sounds like they mixed the chanting of Buddhist monks and The Lion King theme song and then out of nowhere, an amazing sprawling guitar solo comes into the fray with mind-blowing technicality. And the guitar work doesn’t stop for a couple minutes before it breaks into mindless garble of bubbly noises akin to the sound an anteater would make if it were to drink milkshake through its flabby snout. I have a theory that they actually recorded half the record in a zoo full of chipmunks and all they had to do is give them some voice amplifiers and cacti to hit each other with.
It’s hard to critique an album as bizarre as this one, but I trust that anyone who will listen to it will immediately fall in love. It’s upon the edges of the human imagination, stretching to boundaries of music as we know it. The metaphysical themes are a testament to the fantastic amount of diverse sounds apparent in the music. It makes you wonder how much effort they would’ve went through trying to compose these wonderful montages of music in order to satisfy their hallucinogen-addicted minds. Probably none at all.
