Either we’re getting old or time is passing very quickly. Acid Mothers Temple will be thirty years old in 2025. For thirty years, Kawabata Makoto has been realizing an idea that is so simple, yet so bold, and that is so rarely realized by artists who put themselves under the psychedelic label: to make music that is fucking trippy. Let’s just say that it has delivered, regardless of the album, the band’s line-up, the name the band has taken on at any given time or where we’ve seen them perform. Making psychedelic rock, with no bullshit or ulterior motives – being fucking trippy – has been enough to keep us happy for – hell, already? – thirty years.
So let’s celebrate Acid Mothers Temple. They are the remnants of an idea that, although it may be renewed, is unlikely to find militants as dedicated and convinced (yes, just making music that’s fucking trippy) as Kawabata Makoto. It’s not just a state of mind, a willingness, it’s also a knowledge of how to cross-reference studies of contemporary European music from the second half of the 20th century with the jam ideas intrinsic to krautrock, the second-hand psychedelic journeys that Japan took from the 1960s to the 1980s and which, rather than mimicking, has built up a heritage that still serves as inspiration today. Not just for rock, but for almost all musical genres. And, of course, it also served as one of the foundations for Kawabata Makoto to believe in and work on an idea of rock as something transcendental that lives from the moment and the ecstasy of picking up and playing a guitar. An idea that has always had an identity and that we can immediately identify as soon as we hear the first notes of something by Acid Mothers Temple.
Thirty years of continuous ecstasy, with the ups and downs of those who aren’t afraid to take risks and who take to the stage to give us the best possible experience, in the best possible way and to remind us that it’s possible to go up there without ever having to come down. AS
