Acid Mothers Temple
May 8th, 2015
Comet Ping Pong
Washington, DC

Source:
Roland Edirol R-09 (onboard mics, low-cut on, AGC off) > WaveLab (Puncher (high density, 75% effect, 0% output gain) + SL-1 StereoExpander (100%) > Audacity (levels normalized, DC offset (if present) corrected)) > CDWAV (tracks split and saved as .FLAC level 8 ) > foobar2000 (ReplayGain + tags)

Location:
House center-rear, on top of a cage full of hipster beers

Taper: ZaPenguin (zappa.penguin(AT)gmail.com or
http://db.etree.org/ZappaPenguin)


SOUND QUALITY: B+ - this is kind of making me wish I had started self-grading with a wider spread. There's really nothing at all "bad" about this recording - it's just a largely-unaltered recording of a band playing in a small room not really meant for loud music over a PA system not really meant for loud bands. Given the gear involved on both ends, I can't imagine this recording turning out much better than it has.


THE BAND:
Tsuyama Atsushi: monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Tabata Mitsuru : guitar, maratab
Higashi Hiroshi: synth, guitar, voice, dancin'king
Satoshima Nani: Osaka mutant drums
Kawabata Makoto: guitar, voice, speed guru

NO LONGER WITH THE BAND BUT WE WON'T FORGET HIM:
Shimura Koji: drums, latino cool

TRACK LIST:
01. soundcheck [3:17]
02. Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky [19:47]
03. Benzaiten [18:48]
04. technical issues [2:57]
05. Pink Lady Intro [2:55]
06. Pink Lady Lemonade [13:44]
07. Om Riff [7:35]
08. Pink Lady Lemonade [6:15]
09. Cometary Orbital Intro [6:29]
10. Cometary Orbital Drive [8:45]

Notes:
Track 06 isn't quite the same as most Pink Lady Intros from this tour, and is actually somewhat of a half-step between 2015's intros and the "Reflections" of previous tours - mostly Kawabata noodling on his guitar while the sound issues are worked on, with some jazzy / avant fills from Satoshima. I'm also going to semi-officially dub track 09 as the "Cometary Orbital Intro" until instructed otherwise - and boy howdy what a great jam it is.


MINI BIO:
"Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (and subsequent offshoots) is a Japanese psychedelic band founded in 1995 by members of the Acid Mothers Temple soul-collective. The band is led by guitarist Kawabata Makoto and early in their career featured many musicians but by 2004 the line-up had coalesced with 4 core members and frequent vocal guests.

The band have a reputation for phenomenal live shows, and releasing frequent albums on a number of international record labels, as well as the Acid Mothers Temple family record label which was established in 1998 to document the activities of the whole collective."
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which every 14 year old has edited.


BAND PAGE:
http://www.acidmothers.com


SHOW NOTES:
A weird little venue in the trendy upscale part of D.C. - for the most part, it's a bona-fide bar-and-restaurant with a small alcove in the back, large enough for two ping-pong tables (hence the name). But every so often, when the spirit strikes, the ping-pong tables are folded up and pushed aside, and the curtains are drawn back to reveal a small stage area - no more than a foot off the ground.

Tonight, the spirit struck, and in my wild youthful abandon I would sooner think it was because the Acid Mothers just so happened to be in town, and not because of boring things like "booking agents" and "scheduling".

The result is one of the longer shows of the tour (quite possibly the longest), though five minutes of the running time is either soundchecking or dead air. While the sound in the venue itself was, to put it nicely, "really weird" (the perils of having a multi-purpose venue with largely-temporary, mobile sound equipment), the recording came out quite okay, and the venue ran up against city curfew just to ensure the band got to play their whole set - if it's a choice between this or another "sorry, you guys have fifty minutes, deal with it" like the 2011 Red Palace show (a similarly-sized room, but with the advantage of being a dedicated 7-days-a-week concert venue), I'd choose this in a heartbeat.

The staff deserves a shout-out as well - not a single surly jerk on the payroll, and when a certain idiot (who shall remain nameless) left his (or her) digital recorder on top of the beer cage due to being quite easily distracted, they were spot-on about recovering it and keeping it in a safe, undisclosed location, so the aforementioned nameless idiot could easily recover it on his (or her) way to Richmond (or, again, quite possibly, somewhere else entirely).

REQUESTS & REMINDERS:
Do not sell this recording. Do not buy this recording. Do not sell this recording, then buy it from yourself.


CREDITS:
Dynamite Children - Dynamic Conduct

Torrented by the taper: ZaPenguin

email - zappa.penguin(AT)gmail.com
web - http://db.etree.org/zappapenguin (always woefully out of date)

Band page: http://www.acidmothers.com