Troubadours From Another Heavenly World (LP)
VINYL FORMAT. "Third PSF album from the Nagoya-based (but always heavenly-bound) Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., led by Japan's current king of the long-hairs and mystic rock-guitar guru Makoto Kawabata (also of Musica Transonic, Mainliner, Toho Sara). Their previous releases were delirious communal Gong/Hawkwind patchouli collisions, colorful as a Life with the Hippie Jetsons cartoon, but with an acid punch that proved their music was beyond any idea of pastiche or irony. A couple of extensive American and European tours have gained the Acid Mothers an unbeatable cachet ont he contempo-trip scene. Kawabata's international reputation has been cemented with solo and group releases on his own ATM label, SIWA, Eclipse, Swordfish, Detector, Elsie & Jack, Last Visible Dog, etc. For their latest flight though, the Acid Mothers have stepped back off the delirium pedal, and bumped up the luminous folk-mysticism faders. To be sure, the space synths, guitar supernovas, and stoned cosmic mumble are still present. It's just that now they're deployed to entirely different effect -- this is no longer the soundtrack to your first high school acid 'n' beer party, it's more like a solitary roadtrip seeking enlightenment, a hermit's cell halfway up Magic Mountain, the cosmic butterfly gently enfolding its pan-dimensional wings over your bruised psyche. It's a slowly hypnotic, deeply meditational platter of god-honest real-time wonder." -- Alan Cummings